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Understanding the eating quality perceptions of international consumers to Australian sheepmeat
Get PDFConsistent eating quality of sheepmeat is crucial to satisfy consumers, ensuring that they repurchase product. Therefore, this thesis explored the key factors that affect consumer perceptions of eating quality, namely American, Australian and Chinese consumers tasting Australian sheepmeat. These international consumer groups were selected based on their divergent relationships with lamb and sheepmeat products, and relevance to the Australian sheepmeat industry. To test consumer responses, the Meat Standards Australia (MSA) sensory protocols were utilised as they provide an internationally accepted methodology to assess untrained consumer perceptions of sheepmeat and beef products. Further, the existing MSA prediction models already adopted by the Australian industry provide a mechanism for the seamless integration of findings from this work.
The first experiment compared the sensory responses of 2,160 untrained American, Australian and Chinese consumers to grilled longissimus lumborum and semimembranosus muscles from Australian lambs (n=164) and yearlings (n=168). Linear mixed effects models demonstrated no difference between the three countries for juiciness and overall liking scores, while for tenderness, liking of flavour and odour, American consumers scored highest, followed by Australian and Chinese consumers. Across these consumer groups, similar factors were shown to influence eating quality, yet varied in the magnitude of their effect. All consumer groups preferred the longissimus lumborum, lambs compared to yearlings, and Merino sired and female lambs. Analysis of consumer demographic factors and sheepmeat consumption habits on eating quality scores, demonstrated consumer age, gender, number of adults in a household and income affected sensory scores, however no consistent trend was observed across the different countries. Frequency of lamb consumption had an impact on sensory scores of the three consumer groups. Linear discriminate analyses were used to determine quality thresholds, and accuracy of predicted quality grades compared to actual consumer assigned grades. Chinese consumers demonstrated the most generous consignment of samples to higher quality grades, while American and Australian consumers were similarly more critical. The optimised discriminate function was also most accurate for Chinese consumer assignment to quality grades compared to Australian and American predictions. The last component of this work aimed to develop and test a new MSA cooking method, traditional Chinese hotpot. This experiment involved testing sensory responses of 720 untrained Chinese consumers to Australian lamb (n=108) and yearling (n=109) shoulder and leg cuts to assess the impact of cut-type and animal factors on eating quality using this cooking method. Shoulder cuts were more palatable than leg cuts, lambs were preferred to yearlings, and increasing intramuscular fat had a positive influence on sensory scores. Conversely, increasing muscularity negatively influenced eating quality scores. Results suggest shoulder and leg cuts cooked using hotpot could provide a better eating experience compared to some previously tested sheepmeat cooking methods. In addition, the influence of muscularity and intramuscular fat emphasise the importance of balanced selection for quality and yield traits to ensure consumer satisfaction is maintained.
Overall, results demonstrated that consumer sensory perceptions of sheepmeat are highly consistent across countries, irrespective of cultural differences, with minimal variation in eating quality scores between the three countries and a consistent response to animal and production factors. However, the discriminate analysis demonstrated some perceptions of quality varied between the three countries, suggesting further investigation through the scope of the new sheepmeat MSA model may be beneficial to determine whether adjustments should be made to prediction models for product destined for these markets
The impact of pre-slaughter sensory enrichment on reducing cattle stress
Get PDFCattle can be exposed to pre-slaughter stressors that have negative impacts on cattle behaviour and welfare. Environmental sensory modifications (sight, sound, smell) can reduce stress, but they have not been investigated in a commercial beef processing setting. This study examined if environmental sensory modifications could reduce pre-slaughter cattle stress and alter cattle behaviour at a commercial beef processing facility. The study was approved by the Murdoch University Animal Ethics Committee (R3302/20) and meets the requirements of ISAE ethics. The following environmental conditions were tested individually; (1) reduction of intermittent plant noise (removal of safety siren), (2) masking abattoir odours with hay odours provided in the cattle race way, and (3) lights added to illuminate cattle race way, and (4) an acoustic sound wall enclosing the lead-up chute to the site of euthanasia reducing the noise levels from 100 to 72 dB hertz. Cattle of mixed sex (female= 240, male= 994), age (0-8 teeth) and breed that had been on a 100-day grain feeding program prior to slaughter were selected. The breeds consisted of Angus, Murray Grey, Simmental, Limousin, Red Angus, Droughtmaster, and Ultra Black. Cattle were not selected for breed type, age or sex in this study and hence was not included in the analysis. The environmental modifications were evaluated singularly. Each experimental group consisted of between 70-110 cattle with 20 focal cattle for subsequent blood collection, as such each control and treatment group had 20 focals included (Table 1). Three replicates of each treatment were repeated giving a total sample size of approximately 70-110 cattle including 60 focal animals per treatment. Blood samples were collected immediately post-slaughter and were analysed for glucose, lactate, magnesium, creatine kinase and aspartate aminotransferase. All carcasses were graded by qualified Meat Standards Australia (MSA) graders after overnight refrigeration and measurements included ultimate pH (pHu), with increased levels indicating pre-slaughter stress. Cattle behaviours were assessed by Qualitative Behavioural Assessment (QBA), in which observers scored the demeanour of the cattle using a fixed list of terms after viewing short video clips as they walked through the raceway leading to the site of euthanasia. The blood parameters and pHu as carcass variables were analysed using general linear models (GLM) to determine the impact of treatment, which was performed using the statistical package SAS. The QBA data was generated by the method of Principle Components Analysis (PCA), performed using the statistical package GenStat. Each of the assessed animals received a score on the two main PCA consensus dimensions that were generated, and these scores were analysed with a mixed‐model Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to determine if there was an effect of treatment (fixed factor) on the transformed PCA dimension scores given to the animals. The QBA observers had a significant consensus in their scores when observing cattle demeanour (P<0.01). The cattle groups exposed to the hay-odour and reduction of intermittent the noise both had higher QBA scores than the controls, with the observers scoring them as less “frustrated” and less “agitated” (P<0.01). Ultimate pHu decreased (P<0.05) for the hay-odour group and reduction of intermittent plant noise group compared to the controls. Additionally, there was a negative association between pHu and the QBA scores for the cattle exposed to the hay treatment (P<0.05). Whilst all carcasses met MSA minimum requirements for pHu, the effects of enrichments on pHu and the relationship between pHu and the QBA was small and may warrant further investigation. This study suggests that environmental sensory modifications for pre-slaughter cattle, such as odour-masking and noise reduction in the raceway immeditaely leading up to the point of slaughter at a commercial processing facility, can reduce indicators of pre-slaughter stress. These improvements would not only benefit the welfare of the cattle, but also meat quality for the consumer and the economic returns and ‘social license’ for the processor/producer
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Intramuscular fat as a predictor of eating quality
Get PDFThe steady decline in sheepmeat consumption throughout Australia over recent decades has been partly driven by inconsistencies in eating quality. Eating quality, and thus sensory perception (tenderness, juiciness, flavour, overall liking), is a key factor influencing consumer demand of sheepmeat. A strong positive driver of consumer sheepmeat sensory scores is intramuscular fat (IMF), and has therefore been proposed as a required measurement in future grading systems. IMF of the M. longissimus lumborum (loin) has been shown to be moderately correlated with IMF of muscles throughout the lamb carcass, indicating potential to predict eating quality of these muscles based on loin IMF. Thus, there is potential to predict the eating quality of these muscles based on the IMF content of the loin.
Consumer sensory scores of untrained consumers were obtained for the grilled loin, M. semimembranosus (topside), M. gluteus medius (rump), M. biceps femoris (outside) and both the M. rectus femoris and M. vastus lateralis (knuckle) of 918 lambs. IMF was measured in all muscles using a lab-based near-infrared procedure. Linear mixed effects models (SAS Version 9.1) were used to analyse consumer scores for tenderness, juiciness, flavour and overall liking of all individual cuts. Two versions of these models were tested; firstly fitting loin IMF as a covariate, and secondly fitting IMF of each individual cut as a covariate. Both loin IMF and individual cut IMF predicted the eating quality of all cuts for tenderness and flavour. However, in the loin, outside and topside, only juiciness and overall liking scores could be predicted. In almost all cases, loin IMF accounted for more eating quality variation than individual cut IMF, describing between 8%-20% more variance. The results suggest that to predict eating quality, measuring of IMF within each cut is not needed, with only a single measurement of IMF taken from the loin required to predict eating quality. This is an important finding and supports current investment within the Australian sheepmeat industry to develop and implement an online objective measurement of IMF within the loin
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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