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).
