Abstract
Achieving quality and consistency of stable fresh red meat supplied to the
consumer remains a challenge for the meat industry. This is due to the fact
that the quality of meat is dependent on several factors across the chain.
For example, the characteristics of the product within the same animal
species will depend on physiological 66factors (e.g., genetic background of the animal, age, and
muscle type and location), on-farm management factors (e.g., diet and level
of exercise/stress that an animal is exposed to), post–farm gate factors
(e.g., transportation, lairage condition, access to feed and water), and
processing conditions (postmortem temperature regime, electrical input and
postmortem handling).