Standardizing Collection and Interpretation of Warner-Bratzler Shear Force and Sensory Tenderness Data

One of the 11 recommendations from the National Beef Tenderness Conference was to standardize Warner-Bratzler shear force measurement protocol (NCA, 1994). The newly revised set of guidelines (AMSA, 1995) for these measurements is very good, but it is not a set of standards. The meat scientists in attendance at that conference promised the beef producers that Warner-Bratzler shear force measurement would be standardized so that data collected by different institutions would be comparable. Indeed, a standard protocol for determining Warner-Bratzler shear force value was developed (Savell et al., 1994). The protocol is published on the World Wide Web, but no mechanism for implementation and verification was established. It is particularly critical that institutions collecting data for the industry have comparable data so that conclusions drawn do not vary depending on where the data were collected. However, if objective measures of tenderness are used solely to detect differences among treatments within an experiment, having data comparable to other institutions may not be important. However, we believe that all institutions would benefit from verifying their measurements are accurate and precise. Thus, to ensure accurate, precise, and comparable data from all research institutions, a mechanism for developing and evaluating protocols and verifying the accuracy and precision of results needs to be established.