High Quality Meat Starts with Animal Care

Best management practices for handling animals, health care, nutrition, and transportation all play a part in producing the meat products we enjoy so much. For many of us, meals start with a meat entrée. As meat-eaters, we expect the meat we buy to be a tasty and high-quality product. However, meat tastiness and quality don't start at the processor; they start at the farm level with how a producer cares for those animals. Best management practices for handling animals, health care, nutrition, and transportation all play a part in producing the delicious meat products we enjoy so much. Let's explore how this works.

Producers give careful thought to handling animals from the time they are born through the time they are harvested for food. Animal handling affects meat quality in several ways, including color, juiciness, and tenderness. First, animals must be handled quietly to avoid stress. When an animal becomes stressed, it depletes muscle glycogen, which is basically a form of glucose that an animal uses for energy. In beef cattle, this glycogen depletion results in meat with a dark red color rather than the normal bright red. It can also cause the meat to be dry. These animals are referred to as dark cutters.  In hogs, the meat appears very pale and soft, and the meat loses water through weeping. This causes the meat to be dry and tough. The condition is referred to as pale, soft, and exudative, or PSE.

Stress can result from animals fighting, changes in weather, fasting, or transportation. Simple things, such as mixing animals that don't know each other into a group, can cause fighting as they work out a pecking order. In other words, the animals seek to determine who is the boss and who is not. In most cases, the larger animals tend to work their way to the top of the pecking order. Therefore, producers raise and transport animals in groups of similar sizes to avoid excessive fighting. Some processors require truckers who transport animals to their facilities to complete a transportation quality assurance certification program, which helps them better understand animals and how transportation stress affects meat quality.

Producers who spend time working with animals are more likely to raise animals that experience lower levels of stress when introduced into a new environment. This could mean producers walk through animal groups each day to check their health status, or it could refer to how producers handle animals when moving them through a handling system. Getting animals accustomed to a variety of noises helps them remain calm. Some producers will even play music in their barns to accustom animals to different sounds and human voices. The only time the radio goes off in the barn is when the power goes out.

Another aspect of animal handling begins with understanding how animals see and react to situations. Any reason for an animal not to move through a handling system can be considered stressful to an animal. Animals move through a handling system more easily whenever producers pay attention to basic concepts. Loud noises can spook animals and make them balk at moving through the system. Animals tend to move toward light, so producers should set up their handling system in areas to take advantage of this tendency. Think of light at the end of a tunnel.

Humans have a more highly developed ability to perceive depth than animals. While we see a shadow on the floor of the handling system, an animal may perceive the shadow as a deep hole. Animals do not want to cross the "deep hole" and so will balk at the shadow. They are also likely to balk at an object in the system. Coats can be very scary to an animal when they are lying across a gate!

Producers can simply walk through the inside of the handling system to try to see what animals see and thus identify areas that may stress the animals and make them less willing to move. As the producer walks through the system, he or she can look for dark areas, items hanging down into the system, and check for any bolts or hinges that could bruise an animal. Processors must remove and throw away bruised areas in the meat. Through quality assurance training programs, producers have greatly decreased losses from bruising.

Animal health can also impact meat quality by affecting the amount of fat in the meat, called marbling, and the amount of exterior fat. Marbling and exterior fat both influence the tenderness and juiciness of meat. To maintain animal health, most producers vaccinate their animals to prevent diseases. According to research from Oklahoma State University, a disease such as pneumonia not only affects the lungs in an animal but, for beef cattle, often results in lower quality grades and less tender meat.

Nutrition's impact on meat quality can be attributed to the rate at which an animal grows. Diets with higher levels of energy and protein enable animals to reach an acceptable market weight at a younger age. This younger age results in more tender meat and, in some instances, can lead to a more desirable meat color. Animals that do not have access to feed and water for an extended period during transportation may also produce lower-quality meat. This is one of the reasons why livestock haulers can drive for longer periods than other truck drivers. However, the main concern is the health and welfare of the animals.

So, the next time you enjoy a great-tasting piece of meat, remember that it doesn't taste that good by accident. Producers carefully cared for the animal that produced the meat by paying close attention to animal handling practices, healthcare, nutrition, and transportation.

The content of this article, including text, graphics, and images, is educational only and not intended to be a substitute for veterinary medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.  Always seek the advice of a licensed doctor of veterinary medicine or other licensed or certified veterinary medical professional with any questions you may have regarding a veterinary medical condition or symptom.