CT scanning carcases has no detrimental effect on the colour stability of M. longissimus dorsi from beef and sheep

This study investigated the effect of computerised tomography imaging (CT scan), for carcase composition determination, on the oxy/metmyoglobin ratio, hue and L∗, a∗ and b∗ scores of M. longissimus dorsi from both beef and lamb. Beef and lamb M. longissimus dorsi were divided into four proportions and randomly allocated to one of the following treatments; CT 30 day aged; CT fresh; control 30 day aged; control fresh. Colour measurements were made over a 96 h retail display period. CT scan had little effect on the colour of both lamb and beef across all colour parameters. There was a small negative affect observed in CT aged samples (P < 0.05) for ratio, hue, a∗ and b∗ values, however these differences were so small that they are unlikely to impact upon the commercial shelf-life of the product. Other factors such as aging, species and vitamin E concentration play a much greater role in colour stability than CT. Aged M. longissimus dorsi clearly had a worse colour stability than the fresh packaged samples, while beef was a lot more colour stable than lamb. It appears that CT scan for the purpose of body composition determination will not have any commercially relevant impact on colour stability of both beef and lamb.