BABY-BEEF COLOR

The inland market in the Czech Republic has had a long-term shortage o f veal. A contingent shortage of veal is fully compensated by the supp ly of high-quality baby-beef in other countries. The Czech official sy stem of slaughter cattle purchase does not comprise these categories. Therefore efforts to produce and supply baby-beef to the market have a ppeared. Intensive fattening of bulls of dairy breeds is one of the po ssible ways. These problems were addressed in a grant project (Soutor et al., 1996) in production and economic terms, and meat quality in th ese animals was evaluated parallelly. Color plays a key role in the qu ality of veal and beef. This quality trait varies in relation to anima l age as well as to many other factors. A general relation can be appl ied that veal and beef color turn darker with growing age. Baby-beef s hould have a definite color spectrum that could assume the function of a quality criterion. Trials were conducted to evaluate meat color in young bulls and young oxen of the Black-Pied Lowland breed (N) with dr essed carcass weights of 180 to 220 kg. Myoglobin content in the MLLT muscle, part thoracis, ranged from 2,500 to 3,400 mg/kg. The lightness of meat color was evaluated by measuring reflectance at wavelengths o f 525 and 685 nm. Reflectance values were not in significant correlati ons with myoglobin values. Sensory evaluation of other samples of baby -beef was also done, and the results were correlated with the values d etermined by objective methods; The relations between sensory evaluati on and reflectance values were found to be highly significant while th e relationship of myoglobin contents to the results of sensory evaluat ion and to the reflectance values was insignificant. The biochemical c haracteristics of meat, particularly its pH value and protein content, are likely to be the reason, so the action of the actual source of me at color, i.e. myoglobin, can be blurred. Hence reflectance measuremen ts are recommended among the objective methods for practical evaluatio n of meat color.