Meat tenderizing effect of injecting encapsulated Ca2+ in liposome into rabbit before slaughter

Encapsulated calcium in liposome (L-Ca) produced by using egg phosphatidyl choline in the laboratory was injected into rabbit to evaluate the effect of calcium injection on the ageing of meat. After injecting L-Ca into the blood vessels of rabbit to increase the Ca2+ concentration in the body for 24 h, the fragmentation rate of myofibrils was observed. The fragmentation rates in the loin from the control group and L-Ca injected group were 2.56% and 3.10% in 2 days, 12.27% and 16.18% in 6 days, and 33.56% and 49.60% in 10 days, respectively (p<0.05). SDS-PAGE patterns of connectin and nebulin show that the total degradation of connectin by the control group took longer than 2-3 days, while it was within 1 day for the L-Ca-injected group. The control group took 8-10 days for nebulin, while the L-Ca-injected group took 2-3 days for total degradation. These results indicate that, injecting L-Ca into rabbit was effective for reducing the ageing period of meat without resulting in any physical shock or contamination.