Beef quality assessed at European research centres.

Loin steaks and cubes of M. semimembranosus from eight (12 month old) Galloway steers and eight (16-18 month old) Charolais cross steers raised in England and from which the meat was conditioned for 2 or 10 days, were assessed in research centres in Belgium, Denmark, England, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands. Laboratory panels assessed meat by grilling the steaks and cooking the cubes in casseroles according to local custom using scales developed locally and by scales used frequently at other research centres. The meat was mostly of good quality but with sufficient variation to obtain meaningful comparisons. Tenderness and juiciness were assessed most, and flavour least, consistently. Over the 32 meats, acceptability of steaks and casseroles was in general compounded from tenderness, juiciness and flavour. However, when the meat was tough, it dominated the overall judgement; but when tender, flavour played an important rôle. Irish and English panels tended to weight more on flavour and Italian panels on tenderness and juiciness. Juciness and tenderness were well correlated among all panels except in Italy and Germany. With flavour, however, Belgian, Irish, German and Dutch panels ranked the meats similarly and formed a group distinct from the others which did not. The panels showed a similar grouping for judgements of acceptability. French and Belgian panels judged the steaks from the older Charolais cross steers to have more flavour and be more juicy than average and tended to prefer them. Casseroles from younger steers were invariably preferred although the French and Belgian panels judged aged meat from older animals equally acceptable. These regional biases were thought to be derived mainly from differences in cooking, but variations in experience and perception of assessors also contributed.

Comparison of chemical composition of meat determined at eight laboratories.

Sixteen minced samples of lean beef M. semimembranosus and M. gracilis were analysed for nitrogen, fat, moisture, collagen, ash and pH using recommended procedures in eight European Communitie' (EC) meat research laboratories. Differences between replicate determinations within laboratories were often larger than suggested in reference methods although they were smaller than the differences between laboratories. Moisture and pH were determined most consistently, collagen least consistently.

Eating quality of European beef assessed at five research institutes.

Loin steaks from 10 animals (five of each of two types) from each of eight European countries were assessed for eating quality at five institutes in Denmark, Ireland, England, France and the Federal Republic of Germany. All panels found wide variation in eating quality and many of the steaks were unacceptably tough. Although attempts to relate quality to production factors were often confounded, differences in post-slaughter handling, particularly between producing countries, dominated eating quality. Breed, sex, age or fatness had relatively little influence on eating quality in this trial. A common eight-category scale of tenderness/toughness was used in addition to each institute's usual descriptive scales for tenderness, flavour, juiciness and overall acceptability, employing four to eleven categories. Within panels, attribute scores were not independent and tenderness and flavour in combination were the best predictors of overall acceptability. Between panels, tenderness was highly interrelated, flavour and juiciness poorly interrelated. These findings, together with estimates of each panel's discrimination and the variation between individual assessors, are discussed in relation to standardisation and equivalence of sensory methodology.