Discrimination between fresh and frozen-then-thawed beef m. longissimus dorsi by combined visible-near infrared reflectance spectroscopy: A feasibility study.

Investigations into the classification of meat samples as either fresh or frozen-then-thawed have been performed using near infrared spectroscopy and two chemometric techniques: factorial discriminant analysis and SIMCA. Work was performed on meat pieces using a fibre optic probe for spectral acquisition. A sample of meat (m. longissimus dorsi) from each of 32 animals of a single species (female Hereford-cross) was collected from a commercial abattoir. Using a standard freeze-thaw regime, results reported show a significant rate of discrimination between fresh and frozen-then-thawed beef for the factorial discriminant procedure; SIMCA was less successful.