Tender Lamb Chops Remain A Puzzle

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31407, 28 June 1967, Page 6

Tender Lamb Chops Remain A Puzzle

"The Press" Special Service PALMERSTON NORTH,

June 27. What makes a lamb chop tender? The reason

has not been conclusively discovered, according to

Mr R. A. Barton, a leading meat research scientist at Massey University.

Mr Barton told sheep farmers he could account for only 20 per cent of the variation in tenderness in lambs and older sheep. Summarising trials with 218 Southdown-Romney lambs and 136 Romney sheep slaughtered at 16 months, Mr Barton said there were no important effects or influence on tenderness from the sex of the lamb or its age. The type of pasture eaten had no influence. The only large influence found on tenderness was the order in which animals in a mob of about 50 were killed. Those killed first in the morning were more tender than

those killed later in the same morning, he said. The trials meant that there were factors other than those studied which individually or collectively had a large influence on tenderness, he said. It had also been found that the chops from lambs grazed for five months on white clover as a sole diet had a much more intense flavour and odour than those grazed on perennial ryegrass.