Chemistry: analytical and immunological testing – Food or dairy products – Meat or eggs
Patent
1993-02-19
1994-09-06
Alexander, Lyle A.
Chemistry: analytical and immunological testing
Food or dairy products
Meat or eggs
436 20, 436175, 436178, 436 96, 422101, 422102, G01N 3304, G01N 3308
Patent
active
053447808
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to a method for determining boar taint producing indole compounds, especially skatole and indole, in pork/lard, by which method a sample of a predetermined amount of lard or fat is taken from a carcass of a pig or part thereof and by which method the sample is extracted by means of a polar solvent, whereupon the contents of one or more indole compounds in the extract are determined, as well as a sample container to be used when carrying out the method.
TECHNICAL BACKGROUND
Cut out pieces from uncastrated boars may develop a bad smell, the so-called boar taint, when heated. In castrated boars, on the other hand, such obnoxious smells rarely appear. Male pigs are therefore usually castrated at a young age in order to prevent the meat therefrom from displaying the unpleasant boar taint when prepared later in the household. In other connections, the castration of male pigs has an unfavourable effect on the animals, as their utilization of the feeding stuff declines, their sickness rate increases and the meat percentage of the carcasses simultaneously falls.
The presence of certain indole compounds in the pork produces this very unpleasant boar taint when heated. Especially the compounds skatole and indole play a very important role. A good correlation has thus been found between the contents in the pork of skatole and indole, respectively, and the development of the boar taint. So far it has not been possible to determine these compounds specifically by a method which can be used in slaughter-houses in an economically acceptable manner.
WO 83/00928 (Slagteriernes Forskningsinstitut) discloses a method for the detection of boar taint by preparing an extract of a meat and/or fat sample, reacting said extract with a color reagent, for which the color intensity developed at certain wavelengths exhibit a statistical relationship with boar taint, determining the transmittance or absorbance of the reacted extract at one or more such wavelengths, and inserting the recorded values in the said statistical relationship.
DK patent No. 154,667 (Slagteriernes Forskningsinstitut) discloses a method for the determination of the degree of boar taint, whereby a sample of meat is extracted with a polar organic solvent, whereupon, optionally following a purification, the extract is analyzed by spectrophotometry or flourometry to determine one or more parameters which are statistically correlated with the development of boar taint. In one embodiment, (also disclosed in WO 83/00928) the degree of boar taint in pork is determined by homogenizing a weighed sample of lard and extracting said sample with tris-(hydroxymethyl)-amino-methane and acetone. A color reagent is added to the extract and the absorbance is measured spectrophotometricly in a wavelength range from 400 to 800 nm. The method is suitable for use in large slaughter-houses, where 1200-1400 samples are analyzed daily. In small slaughterhouses, where for instance less than about 500 samples are to be analyzed daily, the individual analysis will be too costly, as the analytical apparatus is expensive. By the method skatole and indole are not specifically determined, but rather the total contents of skatole equivalents of the sample.
The method disclosed in DK patent No. 154,667 is to a large extent used in Danish slaughterhouses and by means of a standardized spectrophotometric method a limit for the rejection of pigs has been set at the maximum amount of 0.25 ppm skatole equivalents.
The inventor of the present invention has carried out a regression analysis of the test results which are stated in DK patent No. 154,667 in Table I page 15 and Table II, page 17. The correlation factors thereby found are stated below.
When measuring meat extracts fluorometrically, a correlation factor to an organoleptic evaluation of the smell of 0.72 was obtained, while for lard extracts a correlation factor to an organoleptic evaluation of the smell of 0.24 was obtained. When comparing samples of lard analyzed by flourometry and by spectrop
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Alexander Lyle A.
Wallenhorst Maureen M.
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