Assuring eating quality of meat

The way of assuring quality has changed over the years, from inspection of end product to quality management systems and on-line process control. The latter concepts have had a great impact in many industries during the last decades. But the concept of Total Quality is continuos improvement so it is time to take advantage of the next generation of quality assurance tools: Quality by Design. This is the most powerful instrument in quality assurance today. Quality by design has been used with outstanding results in many industries as the automobile and the electronics industry. Maybe the meat industry will be the next? To succeed, the "eating quality attributes" that are most important to the customer must be brought into focus. The challenge to the meat research scientist is to design products and processes that take care of customer needs despite variation in the raw material and the consumer's rough handling. The Quality Management Standards are helpful in conducting the design and production process, but to focus on the right aspects, there also are need for suitable methods as Quality Function Deployment. Customer needs change and new research changes old 'truths'. This require an organisation, a quality system and a culture which can handle rapid changes and a diversity of customer needs.