ABSTRACT
In the broadest sense, meat is the edible postmortem component originating from live animals. For the purposes of this text, these animals include domesticated cattle, hogs, sheep, goats, and poultry, as well as wildlife such as deer, rabbit, and ‘sh. It is reasonable for the de‘nition of meat to include such organs as heart and liver (often de‘ned as variety meats), but the focus of this chapter is on meat de‘ned as those tissues exclusively originating from an animal’s carcass, a proportion amounting to about one-half to three-fourths of the animal’s live weight. This carcass proportion of the live animal weight is classically calculated as dressing percentage and can vary considerably. Some species, such as the turkey, can yield a carcass weighing about 80% of the live weight, whereas a market lamb’s yield is closer to 50%. Animals with small and empty gastrointestinal tracts (such as hogs or poultry rather than ruminants) that are not pregnant, that are more heavily muscled and fatter, that do not have long Žeeces or dirty hides, and that have been slaughtered in a manner that leaves the skin and feet intact with the carcasses (hogs) will have higher dressing percentages (see Figure 3.1).
