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The Effect of Three Temperature Conditioning Treatments and Subcutaneous Fat Removal on Lamb Quality

Louisiana Agricultural Experiment Station² and Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, Baton Rouge 70803

Abstract

Thirty Suffolk and Suffolk crossbred ewe lambs were blocked on live weight and randomly assigned to carcass conditioning treatments of 0, 16 and 23°C for 8 h. Subcutaneous fat over the longissimus muscle and kidney fat were removed from the left side of each carcass during slaughter. The 23°C conditioning treatment had significantly higher temperatures from 2 through 12 h compared with 0°C and 16°C treatments, and the 16°C treatment had higher (P < .05) temperatures from 2 through 12 h compared with the 0°C treatment. There was an interaction between conditioning treatments and fat removal for postmortem temperature. The intact sides had significantly higher temperatures at 2 and 4 h for the 0°C treatment, whereas trimmed sides had higher (P < .05) longissimus muscle temperatures than the intact sides at 6 h postmortem for both the 16 and 23°C treatments. The conditioning treatments increased the pH decline; the 23°C treatment had lower pH values at almost all time periods compared with the 0°C treatment. The 16°C treatment had lower (P < .05) pH values at 6, 8 and 12 h postmortem than the 0°C treatment. The 16°C treatment improved tenderness of the longissimus muscle, as indicated by lower shear force (3.45 kg) and higher sensory panel tenderness ratings (4.80) compared with the 0°C (4.74 kg and 3.82) and 23°C (4.63 kg and 3.61) treatments. Fat removal had no significant effect on pH, sarcomere length, shear force or sensory panel ratings. The 16°C conditioning treatment improved lamb tenderness compared with 0 and 23°C, whereas fat removal at slaughter had no significant effect on lamb quality.

¹ Send reprint requests to the Dept. of Anim. Sci.

² Approved for publication by the Director of the Louisiana Agric. Exp. Sta. as manuscript number 88-11-2248.