Feeding, Muscle and Packaging Effects on Meat Quality and Consumer Acceptability of Avileña-Negra Ibérica Beef.

Marta Barahona,María Del Mar Campo,María Del Mar González,Mohamed Amine Hachemi,José Luis Olleta

doi:10.3390/foods9070853

Marta Barahona, María Del Mar Campo + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/foods9070853

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Abstract

In order to achieve an attractive and differentiated product for the consumer and to optimize and to maximize profitability for the farmers within the EU Protected Geographical Indication “Carne de Ávila”, 24 yearling males of Avileña-Negra Ibérica breed were used to evaluate the effect of 2 feeding systems, concentrate (CON) and maize silage (SIL), and 2 packaging systems, vacuum (VAC) and modified atmosphere (MAP), on fatty acid composition, proximate analysis, water holding capacity and consumer acceptability of meat in 2 muscles: Longissimus thoracis (LT) and Semitendinosus (ST). Animals fed with concentrate showed higher carcass weight. However, feeding did not affect the proximate analysis of the meat. The use of maize silage improved the amount of conjugated linoleic acid and n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and the relation n-6 PUFA/n-3 PUFA. In LT muscle, feeding influenced texture, samples from SIL being more tender. The VAC packaging showed higher cooking losses than MAP in both muscles. Aging increased tenderness and cooking losses but decreased thawing losses. LT samples from SIL feeding were better accepted by consumers and VAC packaging showed higher scores than MAP. We can conclude that the use of maize silage could be an alternative feeding for this type of animals improving some aspects of the quality of the meat.

Highlights

During the past decades, consumers have shown an increasing interest in food production including animal origin [1] at the same time that beef consumption has decreased
The European Union includes within the label Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) those products that are reared in traditional or well-defined production systems, which in the end promotes a clear diversification of agricultural production and specific products [14]
Animals were introduced in the experimental phase with a similar age and a small difference in live weight (p < 0.1), which showed a tendency to be bigger in the maize silage group than in the one with concentrate (273.83 kg vs. 227.67 kg)

Summary

Introduction

Consumers have shown an increasing interest in food production including animal origin [1] at the same time that beef consumption has decreased. Besides the increasing numbers of vegetarians and vegans [2,3], several factors related to the quality of the product have motivated this negative tendency such as animal health [4], origin [5,6], genetic factors [7,8], feeding systems [9,10,11,12], conditioning and processing of the meat [13], among others. The producers of beef in several countries have had an important crisis of profitability in recent years due to the high price of some raw materials for feeding their animals and the high purchase cost of the calves. Several studies have analysed carcass and meat quality of this local breed alone or compared with others [16,17,18,19,20]

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