Evaluation of measurements that may define venison quality parameters in UK farmed deer

Abstract

Early work established that carcasses of deer, compared with other species, were leaner, yielded a greater proportion of ‘first class meat’, that venison had a beneficial fatty acid composition and was dark in colour (Blaxter et al., 1974). More recently, Fisher et al. (1998) and Stevenson-Barry (2000) have reviewed and identified potential important ‘quality’ parameters for venison. From these, the UK deer industry needs to identify a suite of measurements to define ‘quality’, to improve on the current subjective assessments of carcasses in commercial abattoirs and to help guide future production systems. The aim of this study was to identify suitable quality measurements to characterize UK venison.