Animal and on-farm factors affecting sheep and lamb meat quality

Description

Ensuring meat quality is key returning value from sheep production around the world. Meat quality attributes inform customers’ purchasing decisions and define the eating experience of the consumer. Meat quality incorporates appearance traits such as the meat or fat colour and palatability characteristics such as tenderness, juiciness and flavour. This chapter examines possible on-farm factors that may affect meat quality of mutton and lamb. The chapter includes a discussion of future trends in research on sheep meat quality.

Table of contents

1 Introduction 2 Factors affecting meat quality 3 Attributes of sheep meat appearance 4 Palatability attributes for sheep meat 5 Influence of on-farm practices on meat quality 6 Influence of on-farm factors on lean meat colour 7 Influence of on-farm factors on fat colour 8 Influence of on-farm factors on meat tenderness 9 Influence of on-farm factors on meat juiciness 10 Influence of on-farm factors on meat fl avour 11 Summary and future trends 12 Where to look for further information 13 References