Genetic and environmental effects on meat quality

In order for livestock industries to consistently produce high quality meat, there must be an understanding of the factors that cause quality to vary, as well as the contribution of genetics. A brief overview of meat tenderness is presented to understand how genotype and environment may interact to influence this trait. Essentially, meat tenderness is determined from the contribution of connective tissue, sarcomere length determined pre-rigor and rate of proteolysis during ageing, as well as contributions from intramuscular fat and post-mortem energy metabolism. The influence of mutations in myostatin, the callipyge gene, the Carwell or rib eye muscle gene as well as the calpain system on meat tenderness is presented. Specific examples of interactions between the production or processing environment and genetics are presented for both sheep and cattle. The day-to-day variation in tenderness is evident across experiments and this variation needs to be controlled in order to consistently produce tender meat.