Eating Quality of Australian Grass and Grain-Fed Lamb Equally Rated by US Consumers.

Anecdotal suggestions that US consumers perceive Australian sheepmeat as more "gamey" or "stale" compared to US sheepmeat are potentially attributable to the extended chilled shipping times contributing to longer-aged meat and predominately pasture-fed grazing systems. This study evaluated the impact of diet and extended storage times on Australian sheepmeat using sensory scores as assessed by US consumers. Meat samples from Australian sheep (n = 80) fed a grass or grain diet were aged in a vacuum at 1-2 °C for 5, 21 or 45 days. Untrained consumers (n = 960) at Texas Tech University (Lubbock, Texas) assessed samples for overall liking, tenderness, juiciness and flavour using a scale from 1 (worst) to 100 (best). In general, US consumers scored grain- and grass-fed samples within the same storage period similarly (p > 0.05). Furthermore, storage from 5 to 21 days improved sensory scores by a maximum of 28.6 for tenderness for grass-fed outside cuts (p < 0.05), while storage for 21 to 45 days did not improve eating quality for most cuts of both diets (p > 0.05). This is an interesting finding for the Australian sheepmeat industry as long storage time has no negative effect on eating quality and US consumers enjoyed grass- and grain-fed sheepmeat equally.

Consumer Perceptions of Meat Redness Were Strongly Influenced by Storage and Display Times.

Lamb (n = 79) meat colour was scored by 879 untrained consumers using a scale of 0 (brown) to 100 (red). This consumer colour score (CCS) was obtained on m. longissimus lumborum (loin) and m. semimembranosus (topside), stored for short (5-7 days), medium (33-35 days), and long periods (110-112 days) and a retail display time of up to 4 days. Consumers perceived topside to be less red initially and changed from red to brown more rapidly when stored for the long-storage period (p < 0.01). Whereas, the initial CCS of loin samples were similar across the storage periods (p > 0.05). CCS and the instrument measure oxy/met (reflectance of light at wavelengths 630 nm and 580 nm) had a low correlation coefficient of 0.33 (p < 0.01). The propensity for lamb growth and leanness indicated by sire breeding values for lamb weight, eye muscle depth, eye muscle fat depth, and loin intramuscular fat had varied and inconsistent effects on CCS. Therefore, even the selection on CCS.