foods Review Understanding the Determination of Meat Quality Using Biochemical Characteristics of the Muscle: Stress at Slaughter and Other Missing Keys E. M. Claudia Terlouw 1,* , Brigitte Picard 1,Véronique Deiss 1,Cécile Berri 2, Jean-François Hocquette 1, Bénédicte Lebret 3 , Florence Lefèvre 4, Ruth Hamill 5 and Mohammed Gagaoua 5 1 UMR Herbivores, INRAE, VetAgro Sup, Theix, 63122 Saint-Genès Champanelle, France;
[email protected] (B.P.);
[email protected] (V.D.);
[email protected] (J.-F.H.) 2 INRAE, Université de Tours, BOA, 37380 Nouzilly, France;
[email protected] 3 UMR Physiologie, Environnement et Génétique pour l’Animal et les Systèmes d’Élevage, INRAE, AgroCampus Ouest, 35590 Saint-Gilles, France;
[email protected] 4 Laboratoire de Physiologie et Génomique des Poissons, INRAE, 35042 Rennes, France; fl
[email protected] 5 Teagasc Ashtown Food Research Centre, Food Quality and Sensory Science Department, Ashtown, Dublin 15, Ireland;
[email protected] (R.H.);
[email protected] (M.G.) * Correspondence:
[email protected] Abstract: Despite increasingly detailed knowledge of the biochemical processes involved in the determination of meat quality traits, robust models, using biochemical characteristics of the muscle to predict future meat quality, lack. The neglecting of various aspects of the model paradigm may explain this. First, preslaughter stress has a major impact on meat quality and varies according to slaughter context and individuals. Yet, it is rarely taken into account in meat quality models. Second, Citation: Terlouw, E.M.C.; Picard, B.; phenotypic similarity does not imply similarity in the underlying biological causes, and several Deiss, V.; Berri, C.; Hocquette, J.-F.; models may be needed to explain a given phenotype.