• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.48 no.6
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• pp.921-932
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• 2006

Management to improve beef tenderness is always been a historical idea, but during the recent past it has become an issue of prime importance to the meat scientists and the industries as well. Variation in tenderness is the prime explanation for consumer’s dissatisfaction for the concern meat. It has been well documented that both postmortem proteolysis and sarcomere length have significant effect on meat tenderness and its consistency. Electrical stimulation and tenderstretch techniques have been used by a number of countries to underpin carcass quality assurance schemes focused on eating quality. The mechanism(s) by which the postmortem interventions improve tenderness (or prevent toughness) has not been fully elucidated. However, it is evident that electrical stimulation accelerates the development of rigor mortis so that prevention of cold shortening is possible and ageing commences at higher temperatures. On the other hand, tendersretch appears to prevent meat toughness via placing tension of the myofibrils and connective matrix during rigor development. Previous findings indicated that electrical stimulation and tenderstretch improved beef tenderness even for fattened cattle under moderate chilling conditions. Recent studies demonstrate beef tenderness to be one of the most important factors determining satisfaction levels of Korean beef consumers. There are number of studies which reported that electrical stimulation and tenderstretch techniques improved Hanwoo tenderness and color. It is believed that the techniques are mostly useful wherein controls of carcass size, fatness and/or chilling regimes are not easy such as Korean beef industry. However, Korean beef industry is one such area where postmortem intervention techniques have not been adopted so far. Taking into consideration of the Korean beef industry, wherein carcass size and fatness varies the post-slaughter intervention technique could be the most feasible measurement to ensure eating quality. The manuscript attempts to highlight the current knowledge aiming primarily towards the assurance of beef tenderness.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Food Science of Animal Resources Conference
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• 2006.05a
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• pp.192-195
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• 2006

Current study was conducted to investigate the effect of different hanging techniques (achilles tendon, aitch bone and pelvic ligament) on variations in sarcomere length and palatability within and between muscles using thirty-four Angus steer sides. Results showed that tenderstretch(by either suspension method) resulted in longer sarcomeres for most positions within the major leg muscle than did conventional hanging method, but in some minor muscles(eg., mm. gluteus profundus, gastronemius, and gracilis) tenderstetch allowed the muscles fibres to shorten. Some tenderstretched muscles(e.g., m. gluteus profundus, 1.5 ${\mu}m$) appeared not to toughen even at very low sarcomere lengths, while others toughened at higher sarcomere lengths. The current data demonstrated that the effect of tenderstretch on the length of sarcomeres and its influence on palatability varied between muscles, Overall the difference between the two tenderstretch methods was for the aitch method to produce meat that was 3.2 units more palatable than the ligament hanging method.

• Journal of Animal Science and Technology
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.427-436
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• 2004

The current study was conducted to determine the effect of suspension method on satisfaction level of Korean consumers and objective meat quality traits in Hanwoo longissimus dorsi(LD), triceps brachii(TB) and semimembranosus(SM) muscles. Eighteen Hanwoo steers were slaughtered and alternative sides were hung either by pelvic bone(TS) or Achilles tendon(Al). Sensory characteristics, WB-shear force, sarcomere length, water-holding capacity, saroomere length and cooking loss were determined after a 7-d chiller ageing. Higher carcass quality grade received significantly(p < 0.05) greater eating quality for LD, but the grade did not affect eating quality for both TB and SM. TS did not influence objective and subjective meat quality for TB, but that significantly(P < 0.05) improved eating quality for LD and SM. The most noticeable result was that when SM was tenderstretehed, eating quality was equivalent to that of nonna1ly hung LD. In relationship between objective and subjective meat quality assessments, eating qualty for LD had a significant(P < 0.05) relationship with intramuscular fat content, while that for SM was greatly(P < 0.05) related to saroomere length. The current study indicated that pelvic hanging was an effective way to improve eating quality both LD and SM, and carcass quality grades did not greatly reflect eating quality of SM and TB. The data also implied that instnunental measurements poorly estimated the satisfaction level of Korean conswners.

• Food Science of Animal Resources
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.310-318
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• 2004

Eating quality is a reflection of consumer satisfaction, while beef quality grade describes carcass characteristics of chiller assessment which are largely influenced by production systems including breeding and feeding schemes. On the other hand, it should be emphasized that high palatability of beef is a function of production and processing components including breed, nutrition, animal handling, post-slaughter intervention and cookery. Numerous efforts have been made by Korean beef industry and research institutes to deliver high quality beef with which domestic beef consumers are satisfied. However, majority of studies have tended to focus on improvement of intramuscular fat content with little attention on its effect on consumer-based eating quality. Furthermore, there is very limited accessible information(if any) on relative importance of eating characteristics (eg, tenderness, juiciness and flavor intensity) to consumer satisfactory rate and palatability grade. On this regard, our recent results indicated, for example, that when m. longissimus was prepared by a thin-slice style BBQ, relative weightings of tenderness, juiciness and flavor intensity for consumer satisfactory rate were 0.4, 0.35 and 0.25, respectively. When eating quality was graded into 4 groups by a sum of tenderness, juiciness and flavor intensity after multiplying these coefficients, consumers responded that the palatability score for high quality beef should be higher than 79 points. Based on our recent experiments, the current report is intended to highlight relative importance of eating quality characteristics on consumer satisfactory rate, and threshold of eating quality grade. In addition, post-slaughter intervention techniques such as electrical stimulation and tenderstretch are given as examples of critical control points of palatability assurance program of Hanwoo beef.