Management of the many quality criteria for beef: a complex approach

Abstract

The beef meat industry is important in Europe but has to face a difficult economic context partly due to a regular decrease in meat consumption. Operators at both farming and process levels make small margins and marketing channels have become more and more complex and disconnected from the carcass, which is the remuneration basis for breeders. At the same time, the consumers’ behavior evolves through their purchase sites, the types of products they consume and their expectations that are even more complex over time, leading research and development to open widely its range of actions. Whereas in the 1970’s and 1980’s the actions were focused on production and its efficiency, research has gradually included intrinsic meat characteristics such as sensory, sanitary, and nutritional values. More recently, this has been combined with qualities linked to the product (named extrinsic qualities) to meet large societal expectations linked to production practices: animal welfare, environmental impact, and farm sustainability. This paper presents crosscutting integrated research approaches to problems, which are often the only ones to give the expected results, as illustrated for a sanitary risk management or the prediction of meat eating quality. Despite certain gaps in knowledge, many results are available, although not always incorporated in the operator’s practices. Research that is directly linked to the consumer’s expectations is more and more essential. Research has to introduce integrative tools to objectively predict intrinsic qualities of meat, but also its extrinsic qualities. There is indeed a strong need for innovation to gain new markets and to answer societal expectations. A combination of the intrinsic and extrinsic qualities in order to better satisfy consumers is a major concern for the future of the beef industry and more generally of ruminant meat.