Ways to Improve Meat Quality
Quality priorities
• The dilemma of defining handling procedures where there are
• conflicting requirements for different quality characteristics may sometimes
• be solved by considering priorities. Some characteristics are
• more important than others. There
• are three levels of quality. The first level, which had the highest
• priority, required that the meat be wholesome. It should be safe to eat
• and have nutritionally adequate levels of proteins, vitamins and
• minerals. If this could be achieved, the second level required the meat
• to show minimum shrinkage during processing, including cooking
The third level also required the meat to have maximum attractiveness in terms of appearance, convenience and eating quality. It is likely that the first quality requirement, that of wholesomeness, would be agreed by all people. However, the choice of the second and third level
requirements, while obviously desirable, would not necessarily be
everyone’s. Neither would the order of importance, and it is likely that different people in the meat production-consumption chain would have different views. For the final consumer, eating quality is likely to be the second priority after wholesomeness.
Strategies for
improving quality
Of the many aspects of meat quality, some are easier to
improve than others. Characteristics that are dependent on, and amenable to, human intervention can be controlled much more easily than those characteristics that are determined principally biologically.
Examples of the first type are safety and wholesomeness. These can be achieved by careful control of hygiene during production and preparation.
An example of the second type, which is much harder to control, is carcass fatness. We do not understand why there is variation in this largely because of the complexity of biological systems. We can reduce overall fatness in populations of animals by careful selection but we do not know how to reduce the variation. So, although the backfat thickness of pig carcasses has been very effectively reduced over the last 20
years (at an average rate of nearly 0.4 mm per year in the UK), there are still some carcasses that are too fat or too lean. This kind of variation extends to marbling fat, colour of the lean, WHC and eating quality.
The inherent, uncontrollable variation will always be likely to lead to a proportion of carcasses or joints that have unacceptable quality.
Unfortunately, modern consumers have come to expect uniformity of product. At a level of about 5% of unacceptable product, consumers begin to be prejudiced against repeat purchases – they tend not to buy the product again. An approach to this problem of inherent variation is to try and reduce it as much as possible by strict control of all factors thought to influence it and then to monitor quality carefully to
identify that product which is unacceptable. This product can then be marketed differently
It is important to note that there are inherent costs to quality improvement. There is the cost of controlling the factors that are thought to influence quality, the cost of measuring or monitoring quality, and the cost of the product that does not conform to the desired
quality. The latter is both because of the cost of not being able to sell
the product for its original purpose and the cost of reprocessing it.
Quality assurance schemes
The object of these is to certify that particular
standards have been followed in the production of meat. Their purpose is to give consumers confidence in buying meat produced under the particular
scheme, and to counter the confusion and concern that sometimes arises from general criticisms
levelled at some production methods or aspects of quality. Because they are addressed to consumers, they focus on aspects perceived to be of major
importance to them.
There are three main
areas: food safety and wholesomeness, ethical quality, and sensory or eating quality. Food safety concerns revolve, for example, around the possible presence of antibiotic residues, pathogenic bacteria and the contribution to a healthy diet. Ethical concerns include both animal welfare and environmental issues such as pollution from waste
products and fertilizers. Sensory concerns include undesirable meat colour and texture. The aim of the quality assurance scheme is to guarantee to the consumer that these concerns are unfounded.
Labelling and preconceptions
• People may have preconceptions of the quality of certain products and this can influence the way they perceive the inherent or actual quality.
• An example of this is the interest, in some European countries
particularly, in meat from animals reared non-intensively. Sometimes this is associated with the notion of ‘organic’ food. Organically grown food is produced with minimal or no use of ‘chemical’ fertilizers,
pesticides, pharmaceutical products or medicines. Non-intensive rearing systems and organic methods of production are perceived by many
people to be in the best interests of the animal and to lead to better quality of the product.
Some Specific Quality Concerns
• The factors that are currently thought to influence meat quality fall into three time periods: on-farm, ante-mortem and post-mortem.
• Traditionally, inherent or on-farm factors have been considered to be the most important but, under
modern production systems, the greater
significance and importance of ante-mortem
handling of the animal and post-mortem handling of the carcass have been recognized.
