Contributing factors to beef meat quality

Price and quality are key factors for success in food markets and as such are important both for the competitiveness and economic efficiency of firms and of the while supply chain in meeting consumer demands.

The price premium, which high quality products receive compared to low price products, is one measure (in this case financial) of the quality of a product.

The quality characteristics of beef as with any other meat are very important to the ultimate eating satisfaction of the consumer. Meat quality is defined in terms of consumer acceptability and it’s determined by properties and various factors such as tenderness, juiciness, color and flavor may be influenced by changes occurring during the conversion of muscle to meat.

These properties are not easily accessed by a visual approach of the carcass and they are related to human perception, so that they can change depending of geographic, commercial psychologist aspects.

Similar, the post slaughter fabrication and handling steps by the muscle foods processor can affect the ultimate eating quality of fresh and previously frozen beef products.

Microbial growth if permitted to continue will render meats unacceptable to consumers. The ultimate goal of the beef industry is to produce high quality products that consumers will enjoy and purchase again.

Factors contributing to the sensory quality characteristics of meat include breed, intra-muscular fat content; calpastatin and u-calpain gene status, Halothane gene status, ryanodine receptor gene status, diet, antemortem handling and ultimate pH.

In Japan, beef marbling is considered one of the most important factors that determined beef eating quality and high marbled beef is usually consumed.
Contributing factors to beef meat quality

Deficiency of vitamins K in human body

Vitamin K is an essential nutrient that is required as a cofactor for the production of a handful of coagulation cascade proteins.

As a rule, vitamin K deficiency is rare – almost everyone gets more than enough from their own bacteria and from their food.

The intestinal tract of a new born infant is sterile. For this reason, the baby is unable to produce vitamin K until the intestine is colonized with bacteria from the infant’s environment, usually within 24 hrs.

To make up for them, most newborns are given an injection of a tiny amount of vitamin K soon after birth. 

Vitamin K deficiency is rarely seen in adults, because most diets contain enough vitamin K for normal physiological functioning. When adults get vitamin K deficiency, it’s generally because they eat very few green vegetables or because they have been taking oral antibiotics for a long time.

The antibiotics kill off the intestine bacteria that make vitamin K. Sometimes vitamin K deficiency is caused by liver disease or a problem digesting fat.

Abnormal blood coagulation is more likely to arise from secondary causes such as malabsorption syndromes or biliary obstruction than from a dietary inadequacy of vitamin K.

Vitamin K deficiency causes bug black and blue marks from very slight bruises or even for no reason, nosebleeds, blood in your urine and intestinal bleeding.
Deficiency of vitamins K in human body

Food drying effects on microorganisms

The main purpose of drying foods is to lower their moisture content to a particular level that will exclude the growth of microorganisms (bacteria, mould and yeasts).

Significant growth of microorganisms in a food product can be prevented by lowering is water content by an appropriate drying process.

The lower the water activity of a food, the less probable that microorganisms will grow. Water activity affects the growth and multiplication of microorganisms. When aw <0.9, growth of most molds is inhibited.

Generally, mold at lower water activities than yeasts and yeasts will grow at lower water activities than bacteria. For this reason, mold are opt to grow in dried foods than are yeasts or bacteria. In dried foods, the moisture content is lowered to the point which microorganisms will not grow and it is kept that way through packaging, which includes moisture.

Water activity is a vital parameter for food monitoring. Water activity (aw) is defined as the ratio of the water vapor pressure of a food (p) to that of pure water (p0) at the same temperature: aw = p/p0.

Water activity values are used extensively to predict the stability of food stuff with respect to microbial growth and enzymatic, chemical and physical changes.

Water activity also can be lowered by soluble components, such as sugar or salt. Thus, certain syrup and salted, partially dried foods (e.g. foods) are relatively stable as far as at the growth of microorganisms is concerned , although there may be conditions in which they become subject to the growth of yeasts or molds.

Most fresh foods such as fresh meat, vegetables and fruit have aw values that are close to the optimum growth level of most microorganisms (0.97-0.99).
Food drying effects on microorganisms