Vol. 11, Special Issue 4 (2022)

Author(s):
Rohit Kumar Jaiswal, Sanjod Kumar Mendiratta, Jay Kishan Prasad, Suman Talukder, Sagar Chand, Gowtham Prasad Bomminayuni and Vandita Mishra

Abstract:
Buffalo meat has gained popularity due to beneficial nutritional characteristics such as reduced fat, cholesterol and calories and higher units of essential amino acids, biological value and iron content. These led to an exceptional increase in demand for fresh meat among consumers. This instigates some retailers to sell frozen-thawed meat as fresh which is having higher demand. Considering this, the study was undertaken for differentiation of fresh from repeated frozen-thawed buffalo meat by measuring activities of different intra-cellular mitochondrial enzymes. Buffalo meat was collected, packed aerobically in LDPE pouches and subjected to different freeze-thaw cycles to simulate the fraudulent practices prevailing under field conditions. Meat press juice collected from fresh as well as frozen-thawed meat after different cycles using compression method was subjected to citrate synthase enzymatic assays. The results of enzymatic assays revealed that activity of citrate synthase does not show significant difference among fresh, 1^st freeze-thaw cycle and 2^nd freeze-thaw cycle buffalo meat press juices. However, pH and WHC of buffalo meat were increased, whereas TBARS, thawing loss, cooking loss and aerobic plate count were increased during progress of freeze-thaw cycle for buffalo meat. Therefore, citrate synthase based enzymatic assay of meat press juice could not be used as effective method for differentiation of the fresh and repeated frozen-thawed buffalo meat.