Sensory and fast instrumental analyses of meat and meat products: an integrated approach for quality control and communication - MEATing project

growing niche of products from alternative and sustainable systems (e.g. animal friendly farming systems). The quality of these high quality products should be better differentiate and, subsequently promoted, by both fast instrumental and sensory methods conjoined by the use of a shared frames of references. The present research project aims to find sensory (profiles) and fast instrumental (appearance and textural characteristics) information in order to realize a data set for selected high-quality, sustainable or added value meat products and to elaborate results by a multivariate statistical approach (conjoint analysis). This will permit to a) build a reliable model based on the correlation of sensory and fast instrumental data to rapidly predict specific sensory characteristics of the studied meat products, by carrying on fast instrumental analyses (colour/appearance, texture and e.g. water holding capacity); b) verify if the meat products purchased by consumer match its description in terms of compliance with specific farming system/formulation/technological treatment or typicality and reflects the real quality of the product; c) constitute a permanent, independent, panel of high-qualified trained assessors on meat products; d) communicate to the consumers peculiar sensory characteristics of the studied meat products, by a semantic "translation" of technical-scientific terms and meanings in effective and clear messages for a quality-related communication.