APPLICATION AND PERFORMANCE OF THE MEATSPEC FOR CHEESE ANALYSIS

The Meatspec (Foss Electric, Hillerod, Denmark) is a near infrared spe ctrophotometer designed for analysing meat and meat products. The purp ose of this study is to evaluate the application of this equipment to analyse major components in cheese; therefore, the instrument was cali brated with cheese samples analysed by the reference methods. Standard Error of Calibration (SEC) and square correlation coefficient (R-2) v alues were 0.332 and 0.98 for fat, 0.352 and 0.96 for protein, and 0.4 50 and 0.99 for moisture. The calibration obtained was validated with an independent set of samples, giving the following values for Standar d Error of Validation (SEV) and R-2: 0.376 and 0.98 for fat, 0.430 and 0.96 for protein, and 0.581 and 0.96 for moisture. Following Internat ional Dairy Federation Standard 128, no significant differences were f ound between instrument and reference values.