Three groups of double-muscled Belgian Blue young bulls were fed during different stages of production diets differing in the proportions of linolenic and linoleic acid by including linseed in the concentrate or giving grass silage as main linolenic acid suppliers. Samples of rumen and abomasal contents and of the longissimus thoracis, subcutaneous fat, and liver were taken to analyze the fatty...

The objectives of this experiment were to determine 1) whether end point temperature interacts with tenderness to affect Warner-Bratzler shear force of beef longissimus and 2) if so, what impact that interaction would have on tenderness classification. Warner-Bratzler shear force was determined on longissimus thoracis cooked to either 60, 70, or 80 degrees C after 3 and 14 d of aging from carca...

Four barrows and four gilts were assigned to each of five dietary treatments: a control (CO) diet or a 15% flaxseed (FS) diet fed for 7, 14, 21, or 28 d prior to slaughter. Flaxseed treatments did not affect any production or carcass traits (P > .10). No pork processing problems due to lack of firmness were encountered. Amounts (milligrams/gram of tissue) and percentages of alpha-linolenic acid...

The effects of cooking temperature (50-90 °C) and time (10-120 min) on Warner-Bratzler (WB) tenderness measurement of longissimus lumborum (LL) muscle in 70-day-old rabbits were investigated. Cooking losses, total collagen content and collagen solubility of LL muscle were measured in parallel. Increasing cooking temperature caused a four-phase effect on WB measurement. Stress and total energy w...

Near-infrared reflectance spectra (1,100 to 2,498 nm) were collected on beef longissimus thoracis steaks for the purpose of establishing the feasibility of predicting meat tenderness by spectroscopy. Partial least squares (PLS) analysis (up to 20 factors) and multiple linear regression (MLR) were used to predict cooked longissimus Warner-Bratzler shear (WBS) force values from spectra of steaks ...

The effects of the carbohydrate composition of finishing diet (fed from 80 to 107 kg of body weight) and the length of pre-slaughter fasting on pork quality were studied in a 2 × 2 factorial experiment with 80 crossbred pigs. The control finishing diet was based on barley and soybean meal, and the fibrous finishing diet was based on barley, barley fibre, faba beans, and rapeseed cake. These die...