Review for AAS

Vocabulary• Palatability: how a food appeals to the palate

(smell, sight, taste, texture, etc.)• Retail Cuts: small cuts of meat customers

purchase at grocery stores• Antemortem: before death• Wholesale Cuts: large sections of carcass ( half a

hog or quarter of a beef) that are sold to stores who cut them into retail cuts

• Rigor Mortis: a physiological process where muscles stiffen and lock into place

• Exsanguination: removal of an animal’s blood• Postmortem: after death

• Mastication: chewing• Meat (muscle?): any edible tissue from

animals• Chine: the backbone of an animal• Kosher: any food prepared according to

Jewish dietary law• Immobilization: to render an animal

oblivious to pain• Aging: to let a carcass hang in a cool

environment for a period of time to let enzymes break down meats

4 Categories of Meats

• Red• Poultry• Seafood/Fish• Game• Red: beef, veal, lamb, pork (?)• Poultry: chicken, turkey, duck (?)• Fish: trout, crab, salmon, lobster, tilapia• Game: bear, turkey, duck, antelope, grouse, deer,

moose, pheasant

Meat Names

• Poultry• Beef• Meat• Veal• Mutton• Lamb• Pork• Chevon• Cabrito

History of the Meat Industry

• Uncle Sam: – Sam Wilson a pork producer

• Cincinatti was called – Porkopolis

• Wall Street: – actually a wall erected in Manhattan to prevent

pigs from entering town, kept the name ever since

History of the Meat Industry

• Packing Industry: went from an art to a science (why?)

• The Packing Industry: – meats were salted and packed into barrels

• Used to be one animal at a time, now: – Beef = 4,000/line/day – Pork = 8,000/line/day – Chickens = 70-80,000/line/day

History of the Meat Industry

• No federal inspection

• Upton Sinclair’s book “The Jungle”• Meat Inspection Act of 1906• Humane Slaughter Act of 1957

Meat Industry

• Seven areas of inspection• Sanitation, antemortem,

postmortem, control and restriction of condemned materials, product, laboratory inspection, marketing and labeling

The slaughter process

• Live inspection

• Immobilization

• Humane slaughter act

• Bolt, electricity, gas

• No pain

• Heart must continue pumping

Kosher Slaughter:

~ Any food prepared according to Jewish dietary law~Are exempt from stunning the animal but must be done as humanely as possible~Must be from religiously acceptable animals~Meats are undesirable if improperly slaughtered, are not cloven hooved, etc. called non kosher~Kosher foods have a mark (Circle U)~Area must be blessed by a rabbi, only the forequarters can be used because sciatic nerve in hindquarters

Continuation of Slaughter Process

• Exsanguination• Slit the throat, done quickly to prevent

hemorrhaging or spots in the meat from ruptured blood vessels

• Gut the animal, save edible organs (liver is the most common edible organ)

• Internal organs are inspected for health problems, each carcass for consumption has to be inspected

Processing the Carcass

• Carcasses are split

• Cooler

• rigor mortis (6-12 hours for beef and lamb, 30m-3hours for pork)

• Enzymes and microorganisms break down tissue

• Rigor – Relax = Meat

When does Meat become Muscle?

• After the rigor/relax process!!!

• Why hang a carcass?– Over a week– Enzymes and microorganisms break down

meats– Increase palatability and flavor and tenderness

Meats are Good!

• Meats taste good because of intramuscular fat– marbling

• This is fat within the meats, not globs that you can cut off

Antimortem Effects that can affect meat quality:

A. Feed

B. Genetics

C. Sex/Age

D. Stress

E. Disease

***Porcine Stress Syndrome (PSS) is a stress that actually ruins the meat of an animal and causes the meat to be (PSE) pale, soft and excudative (watery)

*** DDF or dry, dark and firm is a stress condition in cattle causing “dark cutters”

Postmortem effects that can affect meat quality:

~heating and cooling is the main one!

~cleanliness

Where do steaks and chops come from?

~the loin of the animal