Mechanically recovered meat

The first slaughterhouse in Denmark for organic meat was set up in 1994, for an organic pig farm nearby. It now produces organic cold meats and sausages. It advertises its products by informing the consumers that their products are made without additives, that all the meat is hand-cut, and that no mechanically recovered meat, blood plasma and extra meat proteins are ever used. 

Related analyses in the meat and meat products area are the analysis of curing brines and of special meat fractions such as mechanically recovered meat (MRM). Completing the list of analyses on meat and meat products are the mineral and vitamin assays used to characterize the nutritional status of these foods. 

Of more interest to the red meat industry is the production of mechanically separated meat (MSM), or mechanically recovered meat (MRM) as it is known in the UK (Anon., 1985). 

Anon. (1985) Mechanically recovered meat. Institute of Meat Bulletin No. 127, 12-13. 

Knight, M.K., Choo, B.K. and Wood, J.M. (1991a) Functional properties of a refined meat product ingredient produced from mechanically recovered meat. Leatherhead Food RA Project M060 Report. 

Newman, P.B. and Hannan, R.S. (1978) Introduction to mechanically recovered meat. In Recovering Meat from Bones. Proc. MLC Seminar, May 1978, pp. 1-4. 

Yuste et al. (2000) showed that high-pressure processing is a suitable alternative to thermal treatment for inactivating S. enteritidis and mesophiles in poultry sausage manufacture. Yuste et al. (2001, 2002) later indicated that the highest reduction in mesophiles (5.3-log CFU/g) and psychrotrophs (more than 7.5-log CFU/g) counts were observed in mechanically recovered poultry meat after exposure to a pressure of 450 MPa in presence of 200 ppm nisin. 

Yuste, 1., Pla, R., Capellas, M., Sendra, E., Beltran, E., and Mor-Mur, M. 2001. Oscillatory high pressure processing applied to mechanically recovered poultry meat for bacterial inactivation. Journal of Food Science 66 482 84. 

E. Olsen, G. Vogt, D. Ekebeig, M. Sandbakk, J. Pettersen, A. Nilsson, Analysis of the early stages of Upid oxidation in freeze-stored pork back fat and mechanically recovered poultry meat. J. Agric. Food Chem. 53, 338-348 (2005)... 

The determination of calcium in meat products, especially in mechanically recovered (or separated) meat (MRM/MSM), is an important estimation of the amount of bone material included in the meat. The AOAC method describes an acid digestion of the sample and reaction of an aliquot of the filtered digest with excess ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) under alkaline conditions to form a chelated complex with calcium ion. The excess EDTA is then titrated with calcium carbonate using hydroxynaph-thol blue as indicator. 

Recovery of this meat would therefore impart a considerable saving to the meat industry, as well as providing a relatively cheap meat ingredient for product manufacture. A variety of methods have been employed to recover the meat adhering to bones. Mechanical deboning is carried out in the poultry industry. In the red meat industry, however, the size and shape of the bones restricts the use of these techniques. 

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