The relationship between consumer perception of quality and the food industry's drive to satisfy consumer needs is complex and involves many different components. Science and innovation play a major ...role in equipping the industry to respond to consumer concerns and expectations.
This paper examines the main elements of consumer perception of meat with focus on the red meat sector. Emphasis is placed on perception at point of sale particularly the intrinsic quality cues of colour, packaging and degree of visual fat. The state of the art developments in increasing consumers' perception at this point are discussed. Experienced quality cues such as tenderness and flavour are well known as being of immense importance to consumers at point of consumption. The latest technological developments to enhance the quality experienced by consumers are discussed. The use of pre-rigor restraining techniques offers the industry a method for changing its conventional procedures of processing beef for instance. Background cues of safety, nutrition, animal welfare and sustainability are also discussed.
Finally opportunities and challenges facing the industry are outlined. It is concluded that the meat industry needs to invest in and embrace an innovation agenda in order to be sustainable. It must utilise emerging scientific knowledge and take a more proactive role in setting out a research agenda.
Changes in consumer demand of meat products as well as increased global competition are causing an unprecedented spur in processing and ingredient system developments within the meat manufacturing ...sector. Consumers demand healthier meat products that are low in salt, fat, cholesterol, nitrites and calories in general and contain in addition health-promoting bioactive components such as for example carotenoids, unsaturated fatty acids, sterols, and fibers. On the other hand, consumers expect these novel meat products with altered formulations to taste, look and smell the same way as their traditionally formulated and processed counterparts. At the same time, competition is forcing the meat processing industry to use the increasingly expensive raw material “meat” more efficiently and produce products at lower costs. With these changes in mind, this article presents a review of novel ingredient systems and processing approaches that are emerging to create high quality, affordable meat products not only in batch mode but also in large-scale continuous processes. Fat replacers, fat profile modification and cholesterol reduction techniques, new texture modifiers and alternative antioxidant and antimicrobial systems are being discussed. Modern processing equipment to establish continuously operating product manufacturing lines and that allow new meat product structures to be created and novel ingredients to be effectively utilized including vacuum fillers, grinders and fine dispersers, and slicers is reviewed in the context of structure creation in meat products. Finally, trends in future developments of ingredient and processing systems for meat products are highlighted.
Emulsion-based meat products play an important role in modern meat industry. Though meat batters have been prepared traditionally since long back in the history, the scientific principles and the ...knowhow are significantly important in the case of commercial products. In India, the market for emulsion meat products is gaining importance in the recent years and the native producers are in critical need for the scientific basis of production of emulsion meat products with better yield, good sensory qualities and nutrition. Hence, this review will throw light on some of the important factors which influence the properties of meat emulsion such as stability, structure, etc. and the product texture and yield as the revealed by past researches which will be useful to the meat processors in their practical application in preparing meat emulsion products.
In recent years, much attention has been paid to develop meat and meat products with physiological functions to promote health conditions and prevent the risk of diseases. This review focuses on ...strategies to improve the functional value of meat and meat products. Value improvement can be realized by adding functional compounds including conjugated linoneleic acid, vitamin E, n3 fatty acids and selenium in animal diets to improve animal production, carcass composition and fresh meat quality. In addition, functional ingredients such as vegetable proteins, dietary fibers, herbs and spices, and lactic acid bacteria can be directly incorporated into meat products during processing to improve their functional value for consumers. Functional compounds, especially peptides, can also be generated from meat and meat products during processing such as fermentation, curing and aging, and enzymatic hydrolysis. This review further discusses the current status, consumer acceptance, and market for functional foods from the global viewpoints. Future prospects for functional meat and meat products are also discussed.
This research aimed to determine the meat production indicators and carcass traits of Posavska crested hen, which is the Croatian indigenous chicken breed. The research was carried out on five ...strains of the Posavska crested hen breed: yellow vetch, vetch, red colourful, light gray, and golden brown. Feeding was ad libitum for the whole time, adapted to the age of the chickens from a nutritional point of view. Separation by sex was carried out at the age of four weeks, while slaughter of roosters and determination of carcass traits was done at the age of 18 weeks. The highest average body weight was achieved by roosters of light gray and yellow vetch strain (3542.63 and 3430.38 g, respectively) and light gray pullets (2562 g) at the age of 18 weeks. The lowest feed conversion ratio was achieved by the light gray strain (2.39) at four weeks of age, and by the the roosters of the light gray strain (4.07) and pullets of the light gray and golden brown strain (4.08) at 18 weeks of age. The average dressing percentage was 71.54%, while the highest average dressing percentage was established in the red colourful strain (72.48%). Regarding the proportion of individual parts of the carcass, a significant (P < 0.05) influence of the strain can be seen in the proportion of drumsticks in the carcass, the proportion of which was the highest in the yellow vetch strain (18.69%). A significant influence of the strain was also found regarding L* (P < 0.01) and a* (P < 0.05) skin color indicators. Considering the established differences between the strains, it is necessary to carry out further selection and work on the uniformity of the breed.
Given the lack of data that relates consumer acceptance of lamb colour to instrument measures a study was undertaken to establish the acceptability thresholds for fresh and displayed meat. Consumers ...(
n
=
541) were asked to score 20 samples of lamb loin (
m.
longissimus thoracis et lumborum; LL) on an ordinal scale of 1 (very acceptable) to 5 (very unacceptable). A sample was considered acceptable by a consumer if it scored three or less. Ten samples were used for testing consumer response to fresh colour and 10 to test consumer response to colour during display of up to 4
days. The colour of fresh meat was measured using a Minolta chromameter with a closed cone and a Hunter Lab Miniscan was used for measuring meat on display. For fresh meat when the
a
∗ (redness) and
L
∗ (lightness) values are equal to or exceed 9.5 and 34, respectively, on average consumers will consider the meat colour acceptable. However
a
∗ and
L
∗ values must be much higher (14.5 and 44, respectively) to have 95% confidence that a randomly selected consumer will consider a sample acceptable. For aged meat, when the wavelength ratio (630/580
nm) and the
a
∗ values are equal to or greater than 3.3 and 14.8, respectively, on average consumers will consider the meat acceptable. These thresholds need to be increased to 6.8 for ratio (630/580
nm) and 21.7 for
a
∗ to be 95% confident that a randomly selected consumer will consider a sample acceptable.
In recent years, interest in meat authenticity has increased. Many consumers are concerned about the meat they eat and accurate labelling is important to inform consumer choice. Authentication ...methods can be categorised into the areas where fraud is most likely to occur: meat origin, meat substitution, meat processing treatment and non-meat ingredient addition. Within each area the possibilities for fraud can be subcategorised as follows: meat origin—sex, meat cuts, breed, feed intake, slaughter age, wild versus farmed meat, organic versus conventional meat, and geographic origin; meat substitution—meat species, fat, and protein; meat processing treatment—irradiation, fresh versus thawed meat and meat preparation; non-meat ingredient addition—additives and water. Analytical methods used in authentication are as diverse as the authentication problems, and include a diverse range of equipment and techniques. This review is intended to provide an overview of the possible analytical methods available for meat and meat products authentication. In areas where no authentication methods have been published, possible strategies are suggested.
In order for livestock industries to consistently produce high quality meat, there must be an understanding of the factors that cause quality to vary, as well as the contribution of genetics. A brief ...overview of meat tenderness is presented to understand how genotype and environment may interact to influence this trait. Essentially, meat tenderness is determined from the contribution of connective tissue, sarcomere length determined pre-rigor and rate of proteolysis during ageing, as well as contributions from intramuscular fat and post-mortem energy metabolism. The influence of mutations in myostatin, the
callipyge gene, the
Carwell or
rib eye muscle gene as well as the calpain system on meat tenderness is presented. Specific examples of interactions between the production or processing environment and genetics are presented for both sheep and cattle. The day-to-day variation in tenderness is evident across experiments and this variation needs to be controlled in order to consistently produce tender meat.
PDF
