Likelihood of obtaining tender meat from confined calf

Abstract

The objective was to evaluate the main factors that influence the shear strength of meat from confined steers and the probability of obtaining soft meat. For this purpose, we evaluated the literature on carcass and/or meat of beef steers in Brazil published between January 1999 and April 2019 and extracted the content from three sections for analysis: materials and methods, results, and discussion. Pearson’s correlation was used to analyze the data, and the stepwise statistic was used to determine the proportion of the synchronized effect of variables on shear force. For determining the probability of tenderness, meat with a shear force lower than 4.6 kgf/cm³ was classified as soft; meat with a higher sheer force was classified as hard. Following the classification, logistic regression analysis and odds ratio test were performed. The factors of study location, the proportion of zebu background in the genome, finishing weight, the percentage of concentrate in the diet, and finishing period and meat marbling explained 62.45% of the variability in the shear strength of beef. The following strategies were found to increase the chances of effectively obtaining soft meat from confined steers: starting the termination phase early even in animals with lower weights, prolonging the confinement time, increasing concentrate percentage in the diet, and a higher marbling degree. It is possible to estimate a large proportion of shear force variability using the production variables (ante-mortem), and the process can be adjusted accordingly to considerable increase the possibility of obtaining soft meat.

Keywords:
ante-mortem; concentrate; shear force; marbling; termination