Eating quality

The flavour, tenderness, juiciness and overall liking of meat are all components of 'eating quality' and each of these can be controlled at different stages of meat production throughout the process chain.

The scope of MLA's Off-farm Eating Quality Program is meat science and technology applications for the processing industry. Hence the focus of research and development (R&D) programs is in areas demonstrating major commercial advancement such as:

• Processing interventions
  In addition to the advanced meat electronics (Generation Two), projects in the areas of hot muscle stretching and low shear-force animals are underway. These may enable quality meat to be produced within 24 hours post-slaughter. Major cost savings to the processor due to reduced shrink and processing efficiencies are also expected.

• Online meat quality measurement
  Projects in the areas of Smart Stimulation and novel sensing technologies such as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy are underway. These may ultimately deliver technologies which, when used in combination, are capable of automatically determining the eating quality of meat before it leaves the processing plant.
  

• Process modelling
  Projects related to mathematical modelling of the muscle to meat conversion process have been underway for several years and are continuing with the model building in complexity. It is expected that this may deliver a fully integrated model with the required sophistication to a very useful tool both to processors and researchers.