Keith E. Belk

Consumers tend to use color for judging meat quality and safety, and oftentimes color is a critical component of their purchase decision. Therefore, industry considers meat color as one of the most important considerations for determining shelf life of products.

In the U.S., water immersion chilling (WC) is commonly used to chill poultry while other regions of the world, such as the European Union (E.U.), prefer air chilling (AC).

Although the affordability and versatility of ground beef helped establish it as a staple in many American diets, "premium" ground beef blends are now being marketed in several foodservice and retail scenarios, adding value to lower-priced trim components and underutilized whole-muscle cuts.

The term antibiotic resistance (AMR) can be used to describe bacteria that are not susceptible to one or more antibiotics.

Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-associated proteins (Cas) together comprise the CRISPR-Cas system.

The 2011 National Beef Quality Audit showed that beef retailers and foodservice operators identified beef flavor as the primary attribute of importance when defining eating satisfaction.

Even though postmortem aging has been widely accepted as the predominant technique for improving the tenderness and overall eating experience of beef, retailers are hesitant to age beef for extended time periods prior to placing it in the retail case because product “freshness” is reduced and a shorter display life may be realized.