Document Type

Report

Report Number

2003-7

Publication Date

2003

Keywords

beef, sarcomeres, skeletal, separation, tenderness

Summary

Thirty crossbred steers were utilized to explore and compare tenderness improvements in beef round and sirloin muscles resulting from various methods of pre-rigor skeletal separations. Animals were slaughtered according to industry procedures and at 60 min postmortem one of six treatments were randomly applied to each side: A) control, B) saw pelvis at the sirloin-round junction, C) separate the pelvic-femur joint, D) saw femur at mid-point, E) combination of B and C, and F) combination of B and D. After 48-h, the following muscles were excised from each side: semimembranosis (SM), biceps femoris (BF-R), semitendinosis (ST), and adductor (AD) from the round; vastus lateralis (VL) and rectus femoris (RF) from the knuckle; and gluteus medius (GM), biceps femoris (BF-S) and psoas major (PM) from the sirloin. Following a 10 d ageing period, samples were removed from each muscle to determine the effect of treatments on sarcomere length and Warner-Bratzler shear force. Sarcomere lengths differed between treatments for SM, AD, ST, GM, and PM. Treatment C resulted in longer sarcomeres than controls for SM, AD, and ST. All pre-rigor skeletal separation treatments yielded shorter sarcomeres for the PM as compared to controls. Warner-Bratzler shear force differed between treatments for RF, ST and PM. For RF, all treatments, except B, resulted in lower (P < 0.05) shear values than for controls. Treatment F resulted in higher shear force values for the PM than controls (P < 0.05). Also, treatments B, D, and F increased shear force of the ST relative to controls (P < 0.05). Correlations between sarcomere length and shear force were found to be low and quite variable between muscles. In general, treatments increased sarcomere length of several muscles from the sirloin/round region, but had mixed effects on shear force values.

Number of Pages

7

Format

application/pdf

Language

en

Publisher

South Dakota State University

Rights

Copyright © 2003 South Dakota State University

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