Consumer Assessment of Lamb Loin and Leg from Australia, New Zealand, and United States

Abstract

Lamb was sourced from 3 countries [Australia (AUS), New Zealand (NZ), and United States (US)] representing 2 muscle types (semimembranosus and longissimus lumborum) to evaluate the palatability of lamb loin and leg chops according to US consumers (n = 360). For tenderness, flavor, and overall liking, there was an interaction detected between source country and muscle (P < 0.05). Overall, US loin chops had the highest (P < 0.05) consumer sensory scores, were rated the most acceptable (P < 0.05), and were placed in better than everyday quality or premium quality categories more often than all other treatments. Leg samples sourced from AUS and NZ were rated the lowest (P < 0.05) for consumer sensory scores for tenderness, flavor liking and overall liking, as well as being the least acceptable (P < 0.05) for flavor liking and overall liking. Both source country and muscle impacted (P < 0.01) juiciness scores, as well as tenderness and juiciness acceptability. US chops were juicier and more acceptable for tenderness and juiciness than chops sourced from AUS or NZ, regardless of muscle; consumers rated loin chops juicier and more acceptable for tenderness and juiciness than legs chops, regardless of source country (P < 0.05). Overall, consumers detected differences in palatability between muscle type and the source country. Loin chops were preferred over leg chops for all palatability traits. US consumers preferred the domestically sourced lamb over the lamb sourced from AUS and NZ; however, complete animal background (diet, gender, and age) and knowledge of potential differences in slaughter and chilling conditions, as well as control over postmortem aging, is needed to help differentiate if differences in flavor were due to diet, genetics, or other environmental factors.

Relationships among Consumer Liking, Lipid and Volatile Compounds from New Zealand Commercial Lamb Loins

“…In agreement with results from other authors [15,27,28], flavor liking was the major driver of lamb meat overall liking, followed by tenderness and juiciness. In general, the level of tenderness across the loin samples in this study was rated as high, supporting the lower impact of tenderness relative to flavor on overall liking scores.…”

“…The main contributors to meat flavor are the volatile compounds generated by lipid degradation and Maillard reactions of soluble components during cooking or through reactions between them [33]. Different studies have reported a positive relationship between overall liking and intramuscular fat or total muscle fat content in lambs [30,[34][35][36]. These reports contrast with the lack of correlation between intramuscular fat and overall liking observed in the present study for all consumers and for consumers grouped in cluster 1 and the negative correlation observed between overall liking and intramuscular fat in cluster 2 (Table 2).…”

“…Different pasture systems may also result in lambs with different carcass weight and in meat IMF content, color and shear force [14]. Phelps et al [15] recently reported that consumer overall liking and flavor-liking scores differed between lamb meat from United States, Australia and New Zealand. Moreover, consumer scores also differed when comparing New Zealand lamb meat obtained from different seasons and regions [16].…”

Influence of Demographic Factors on Sheepmeat Sensory Scores of American, Australian and Chinese Consumers

“…Therefore, while close to 70% of monthly consumers identified lamb as important in their diet (data not shown), the weekly consumption category who scored LL flavour and overall liking lower, actually had a higher proportion of appreciators, negating this theory. This negative response observed in the most frequent consumers of lamb in the American cohort (weekly; Table 1) could be attributed to a preference for locally sourced lamb, as more favourable eating quality scores have been observed for domestic products compared to imported Australian lamb [24]. However, similar to Australia and China, consumer numbers were very low (n = 10) for this group and as such should be interpreted with a degree of caution.…”