Browsing by Author "Du Toit, Francois Matthys"
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- ItemPost mortem carcass interventions to improve beef quality(Stellenbosch : University of Stellenbosch, 2010-03) Du Toit, Francois Matthys; Hoffman, Louwrens C.; McMillan, K. W.; University of Stellenbosch. Faculty of Agrisciences. Dept. of Animal Sciences.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: A total of 32 cattle were divided into four groups of eight each (A1-8, A9-16, A17-24, B1-B8) to be slaughtered on different days over a period of 45 days. All the cattle in Groups A were of Bonsmara type and those in Group B were of Charolais type. Three treatments, Tenderstretch (TS), Tendercut (TC) and Hock suspension (HS) were randomly allocated to each of the 48 sides from group A. Only two treatments (TC and HS) were implemented on the carcass sides in Group B alternating between the right and left sides. Two muscles from each side namely Gluteus medius and Longissimus dorsi were evaluated for purge, cooking loss, shear force and sarcomere length after 2, 4, 6, 10 and 14 days of aging. Paired t-Tests were performed for each pair of treatments and each day separately, on all variables accessed (Snedecor, 1980). The differences in purge and cooking loss between treatments were all found to be inconclusive for each day of aging. Although purge had significant differences between the treatments TC and TS for the GM and LD muscle after 14 days of aging (P = 0.0341 and P = 0.0348 respectively) these were found to be open to doubt as the treatment that delivers the most purge differs between muscles and that the two treatments delivered no differences compared to its HS values. Aging had a significant effect on purge as it doubles after 14 days of aging. Cooking loss values only differed significantly on day 2 for the LD muscle between treatments TC and HS. The differences in shear force were all smaller than 0.3205 kg/ 1.27cm and not consistent over all carcasses. A mean positive improvement in tenderness was calculated from high difference in mean values from some carcasses although some carcasses showed a decrease in tenderness when using TS and TC, which suggests that the treatments are of no relevance towards the industry. Although the differences in shear force become smaller as aging commences, it is not constant, a phenomenon most probably due to the variance between animals. Aging again had the most significant effect (P<.0001) on shear force. Correlations between sarcomere lengths and shear force were low for all the treatments on the GM muscle (HS = -0.453; TC = -0.401 and TS = -0.2) but in the LD muscle the TS method showed a higher correlation (TS = -0.665) than the other treatments (HS = 0.059 and TC = 0.059).