Why is muscle metabolism important for red meat quality? An industry perspective

Abstract

In the 1990s, the beef and sheep industry in Australia recognised that an eating quality assurance scheme was needed in order to describe and differentiate the eating qualities of different types of beef and sheep meat and to ensure the descriptions were credible (Meat Research Corporation 1996). This was in response to the falling per capita consumption of both beef and sheep meat in Australia (Williams and Droulez 2010) and evidence that the inconsistency in tenderness was causing major problems for both sheep (Safari et al. 2002) and beef (Meat Research Corporation 1996) meat. Furthermore, the recommendations for the proposed grading scheme were that it should encompass whole of chain, fr..