Tender loving leads to tastier cuts of beef

ADELAIDE research shows improved animal handling makes for a better quality meat product.

ADELAIDE research shows improved animal handling makes for a better quality meat product.

University of Adelaide PhD student Cathy Dodd observed the treatment of 980 cattle at an abattoir and then assessed the end product after slaughter.

Slow unloading, aggressive handling, and noisy or exposed pens produced poor quality, low-value beef which lacks desired acidity.

"Stress causes dark brown coloured meat that's really tough and goes off quickly," Ms Dodd said.

"People just don't want to buy it. It's not so much the taste but definitely the texture. It's really tough, chewy meat and it looks old."

About 5 per cent of cattle slaughtered in Australia suffer from the meat quality problem known in the industry as "dark cutting". A change in pH (a measure of acidity) from 5.5 to 6 translates into a financial loss of about $100 a carcass.

"I try to help farmers improve the way that they treat their animals," Ms Dodd said. "By treating them better they can get a better quality product."

She said greater awareness of the consequences of poor animal handling could also improve the welfare of Australian cattle sent to Indonesia for processing, where Animals Australia witnessed appalling treatment of livestock earlier this year.

"I would expect the meat from those animals would be awful. I certainly wouldn't eat it," Ms Dodd said. "It would be very tough, very dry. It wouldn't be particularly tasty at all."

The meat from more relaxed beasts is subject to a natural process of tenderisation.

"All your muscles have glycogen in them. It's a store of muscle energy," Ms Dodd said. "If we stress animals before we kill them, they use up all that energy.

 "What happens after they are killed is that any muscle energy left over is converted to lactic acid, which reduces the pH and that acidity creates the more tender meat.

"If we've used up that glycogen before slaughter there's nothing left to make lactic acid."