Extraction of meat juices for isotopic analysis

So far no standard procedure exists to obtain water of meat for isotopic (18)O/(16)O-water analysis. Fast extraction via heating the tissues is possible when considering certain boundary conditions. A specially designed vessel was tested with water and was then used for meat juice extraction. The reproducibility (σ) of δ(18)O-values was 0.12‰. Meat samples of six different species were analysed. Water of pork samples was extracted after open storage. Here, decreases in meat weight correspond to decreases in extract yield and to an increase in the (18)O/(16)O-ratio. The mean water contents in extracts was almost constant [93.2±0.05 wt% (p>0.05)]. The technique offers an opportunity to develop an automatic, mobile extraction device and to obtain extracts with no further influences on their quality. This method could also be useful for the determination of meat quality attributes as cooking loss or drip without evaporative losses.