Industrial thawing methods: meat quality and willingness to pay

Introduction

Meat is a source of premium food products with high intrinsic value, but the production demands substantial resources. Frozen storage of meat can be a sustainable option by extending shelf life, reducing waste, and optimizing distribution efficiency. However, elevated costs and meat quality deterioration can occur in connection to e.g. suboptimal thawing (Cai et al., 2019). Pork meat quality can, as summarized by Bohrer et al., (2024), be broadly defined as a set of parameters used to identify desirable or undesirable attributes for meat products when they are purchased, consumed, or selected for use as raw materials in further processing. This study focused on pork shoulder, an underutilized cut that is often selected for further processing. The pork shoulder was stored frozen and subjected to different thawing procedures to investigate if sensory meat quality and consumer liking was affected.

Objective

To compare four industrial thawing methods regarding their impact on meat quality of marinated pork shoulder.

Method & design

Sampels from the boneless shoulder were commercially frozen at -23°C for two months and thereafter thawed using either air or microwaves at low and high efficiency, in total four different thawing methods. Thereafter the meat was industrially processed into marinated slices for barbecuing. The slices were cooked for 8 minutes at 225°C in a convection oven (Rational SelfCookingCenter), rested for 60 minutes and then cut into 1x1x3 cm pieces. The samples were placed in coded petri dishes and tempered to 60°C prior to evaluation.
Sensory evaluation was performed by a trained panel using descriptive methodology (Lawless & Heymann, 2010). Samples were evaluated in triplicate in a randomised order at a line-scale ranging from 0-100.
To measure the effect on willingness to pay, a consumer test was conducted. The test was designed using a 9-point Likert scale to measure the respondents' preferences for meat together with background information about the respondents. The final part of the survey consisted of questions about the meat that they were testing and their willingness to pay for it. All (N=130) respondents tested the four samples of meat thawed in four different ways in a random order.

Results

Preliminary data from the sensory evaluation showed that the thawing procedure had few effects on aroma and flavour while there were significant effects on appearance and texture of the meat. Further, the thawing procedure affected the willingness to pay for the meat. However, when adding measures of juiciness and tenderness, the effect of the thawing methods disappeared, and juiciness and tenderness explained the willingness to pay. The only control variable that shows a significant effect is age of the respondents which affects willingness to pay in a negative way.

Conclusions'

The preliminary results indicate that all thawing methods, except microwave thawing at high efficiency, were adequate to maintain product quality. The results from the consumer test indicate that the choice of thawing method affect consumers’ willingness to pay. However, the main effect comes from the experienced juiciness and tenderness of the meat.

References

Bohrer, B.M. Wang, Y. Dorleku, J.B. Campbell, C.P. Mandell, I.B. (2024). Pork muscle profiling: pH and instrumental color of the longissimus thoracis is not representative of pH and instrumental color of shoulder and ham muscles. Meat Science, Volume 208, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.meatsci.2023.109380
Cai, L., Cao, M., Regenstein, J., & Cao, A. (2019). Recent advances in food thawing technologies. Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety, 18(4), 953-970. https://doi.org/10.1111/1541-4337.12458
Lawless, H. T., & Heymann, H. (2010). Sensory Evaluation of Food (2nd ed.). New York: Springer.