Monitoring meat quality

Details Monitoring meat quality Monitoring meat quality

1990-12-04

1992-04-14

Little, Willis

Butchering

Miscellaneous

452 57, 73 81, A22B 300

Patent

active

051043521

DESCRIPTION:

BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention relates to the monitoring of the quality of meat, and more specifically of animal and bird carcasses during processing shortly after slaughter.
In the process of the slaughter and preparation of poultry. each chicken carcass undergoes an appreciable amount of processing. The bird is first stunned, then killed, and the carcass then undergoes a bleeding period. It is then scalded and passed from the scalding process to a plucking device. From there, it is passed on to further processing, such as chilling. removal of head and feet, removal of giblets, etc. Such processing takes a time of the order of 10 minutes.
There is a considerable variation between carcasses in the changes which occur in them after death. In particular, there is a large variation in the time which a carcass takes to go into rigor. This variability is dependent upon a large number of factors. The genetic make-up of the chicken obviously affects it, but the age of the bird and the manner in which it has been raised also have a considerable effect, and the experience of the bird--the stresses it has undergone--in the period immediately before it is killed also have a major effect. The processing which the carcass undergoes (the method of stunning, the scalding and chilling temperatures, the storage times and temperatures) is also important.
This variation in the time taken by the carcasses to go into rigor has a major effect on the quality of the meat. Carcasses which go into rigor relatively slowly become toughened by cold shortening following cooling (in air or in spin chillers). Conversely, carcasses which go into rigor rapidly become toughened by hot (or rigor) shortening occurring before cooling.
Cold shortening can be alleviated by slow cooling or by electrical stimulation of the carcass soon after stunning. Hot shortening can be alleviated by advancing the time of cooling. However, these measures can only be employed satisfactorily if a suitable technique for measuring rigor is available. In the absence of such a technique, a compromise processing procedure has to be employed, the timing of which is matched to average or typical carcasses. As a result, the quality of carcasses which go into rigor either faster or more slowly than the average carcass will be poorer.
Similar problems arise in the process of the slaughter and preparation of pigs. The stresses which pigs suffer prior to slaughter are highly variable, involving such matters as how gently they are treated, the time taken to transport them to the slaughterhouse, the temperature at which they are kept, and their degree of contact with pigs from other herds during and after transport. A particular problem which occurs with pig carcasses is that of drip; a carcass which goes into rigor rapidly suffers excessive drip, and hence weight loss.
There is therefore a need for a cheap and rapid technique of measuring the development of rigor in animal and bird carcasses. Such a technique would be of substantial utility in the processing of chicken and pig carcasses, but could also find application in the processing of other carcasses, e.g. ducks, turkeys, and cattle.
A considerable number of techniques of measuring rigor have been proposed.
One technique involves excising a muscle and measuring its extensibility; this technique is clearly suitable only for laboratory purposes. Rigor a balloon is measured by inserting into a suitable muscle of the carcass, its resistance to inflation is dependent on the degree of rigor of the muscle. The resilience of the carcass can be measured by placing a spring-loaded penetrometer on a suitable location on the carcass. These procedures however obviously require skilled operators and are hence costly and timeconsuming. With some carcasses, e.g. pigs, the configuration of the carcass (in particular the angle of the front legs) changes with the onset of rigor. Measurement of resilience in these carcasses is difficult, however. With some carcasses, the degree to which the configuration changes if the carcass is rehung (from the hi

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patent: 4150374 (1979-04-01), Brook
Soviet Inventions Illustrated Week D 36, 14 Oct. 1981, Derwent Publications, Ltd., London, GB, No. 65562 D/36, D12 S03 & SU-A-745808 (Pacific Ocean Fish) 15 Dec. 1980, (15-12-1980).

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