Methodological developments for predicting the sensory quality of beef meat

Abstract

The decline in individual consumption of beef is due to societal issues related to the environment and animal welfare, but also to its purchase price and the uncontrolled and disappointing variability of its sensory quality, as consumer surveys have shown. The aim of this article is to summarize scientific knowledge on the determinism of beef sensory quality and its practical application to beef grading. This sensory quality depends on the biological characteristics of the muscle tissue in relation to the animal's rearing practices, breed, sex and age, but also to a large extent on the biological evolution of the muscle as the meat matures. Current carcass and meat grading systems take little account of these factors, with the exception of marbling in some countries. The MSA (Meat Standards Australia) system and its European equivalent (the 3G system) are able to predict the sensory quality of beef for each piece of butchery, not directly on the basis of muscle biology indicators before and after slaughter, but on the basis of factors that regulate these indicators, such as the characteristics of the animals and their carcasses, and the conditions of slaughter, ageing and cooking. Further research is underway to improve this prediction using various tools (spectrometer, camera, etc.) by measuring specific criteria on the production line that are considered by these models, notably marbling.