Quality of beef from commercial fattening systems in Northern Germany

The objectives of this study were to gather information on the quality of beef carcasses representative of commercial fattening systems and a new fattening regime for intensively fattened heifers. Data on the classification of the carcasses into the EC beef categories were analysed. In all 48 carcasses from the following categories were analysed: 10 intensively fattened heifers, eight young bulls, eight steers, eight heifers, eight dairy cows, and six once-bred heifers. Various approaches of univariate and multivariate analysis were conducted to analyse beef quality of M. longissimus dorsi and M. semitendinosus. The analysis reveals that variation of beef quality assessments is great within and between categories. A significant interaction between category and cooking condition was recorded for M. longissimus dorsi tenderness. As opposed to beef of intensively fattened heifers the sample of dairy cows is darkest with the lowest soluble collagen and the highest shear values. Assessments of the remaining categories are between these categories. The difference between intensively fattened heifers and dairy cows of shear work done was 0·218 J, of lightness (L) was 8·6 and of solubility of collagen was 11·8%. Meat prepared at low temperature is much more tender (shear work done was 11% lower) and had just 30% cooking loss compared to beef of samples prepared at internal temperatures above 70°C. Clustering-based segmentation provides a lower variation of beef quality within clusters than the variation of beef quality within EC categories.