Meat Industry Essay

Introduction

Consumption of meat is often associated with well industrialised countries all around the world compared to developing countries. The major determinant of meat consumption in the population is mainly wealth; the higher average per capita income of a country, the higher the consumption of meat. This has become a trend in most big countries in the world, as example, America (Daniel et al., 2011). People in industrialised countries, where they are capable to afford to consume meat products, find there are five main criteria to determine the eating quality of meat products. They are tenderness, juiciness, taste, appearance, and odour (Takahashi, 1996). One of the criteria that will be highlighted in this review is tenderness. Tender meat is appreciated at higher value of money compared to non tender meat. As explained by Chambaz (2003), Angus and Limousin beef meat which were sensory tested and approved as the tenderest meat was appraised and was able to assure consumers to pay them at higher price compared to Simmental beef meat products which is less tender. This is a critical and significant point to be noted by meat industries of what consumers prefer. Ability of meat industries to produce tender meat with conventional, moderate, or advanced technology will determine the revenue as it influences consumers’ choice directly.

The main problem faced by all meat industries is meat toughening. Meat toughening is mainly caused by rigor mortis that is happen after animals are slaughtered. Rigor mortis caused meat to loss its extensibility causing it to become stiff and tough (Fremery and Pool, 1960). In the meantime, there are many techniques and technologies proposed to overcome meat toughening problems with many of them ...

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...thod of tenderisation that done by inserting needles or mechanical blade into the meat in order to break and disrupt the muscle in meat. Another mechanical methods is by massaging and pounding the meat. The goal of this method is to disrupt both connective tissue and myofibrilar protein that present in muscle. This method has been proven to be effective in 1995 when Tyszkiewicz and Jakubiec Puca proved that in mechanically tenderised pork, the muscle fibres were damaged and resulting in breaking of myofibrils at Z line level, myofibril expansion, sarcolemma rupture, and breakage of linkage between A bands and I bands. The rate of meat tenderisation in this method is easily adjusted by adjusting the machine and time period of pounding and massaging.

Massaging is one method of mechanical tenderisation that is effective in breaking connective tissue in meat muscle.