The American Meat Science Association (AMSA) is pleased to announce, Drs. Wes Schilling, Heather Bruce, and Ranjith Ramanathan will be the featured speakers at the AMSA 71^st Reciprocal Meat Conference (RMC) Symposium entitled “Applied and Omic Approaches to Fresh Meat Quality Defects”, on Monday, June 25 in Kansas City, MO. This symposium will target current and cutting-edge research employed in animal and meat science to address the fundamentals of fresh meat quality defects utilizing omic approaches. The speakers will address new research findings on some of the well-known quality defects such as DFD (dark-firm-dry) in beef and PSE (pale-soft-exudative) in chicken, focusing on both pre-harvest interventions and post-harvest meat biochemistry.

The featured presentations include:

• Proteomic Approach to Biochemically Characterize Poultry Meat Quality Defects: Broiler breast meat quality defects include, soft, and exudative (PSE), woody breast, and spaghetti breast meat. The effects of genetics and nutrition on the production of woody breast meat and spaghetti breast meat will be discussed by Dr. Wes Schilling, Professor of Meat Science at Mississippi State University.  He will also examine research opportunities pertaining to other omic methods and their role in characterizing meat quality defects. This presentation will conclude with research opportunities related to studying the relationships between the gut microbiome, proteomics, and meat quality as well as practical ways that academic researchers can help the poultry industry minimize incidence of quality defects.
• Proteomics and Genomics of Dark Cutting Beef: The factors affecting the incidence of dark cutting in cattle are manifold and affected by animal sex and size. Leading this presentation will be Dr. Heather Bruce, Director of Meat Education and Training Network for Assuring Meat Safety and Quality at the University of Alberta. She will provide insight on how recent proteomic and genomic research into this quality defect has indicated that carbohydrate and glycolytic processes may differ in cattle that produce a dark cutting carcass when compared to cattle that produce a normal carcass.
• Metabolomics of Dark-Cutting Beef: The bright-red color of fresh beef is associated with wholesomeness. Dark-cutting is an example of a color deviation, where beef fails to have a bright-red color. Elevated muscle pH can affect mitochondrial activity and light reflectance properties. Dr. Ranjith Ramanathan, Assistant Professor of Meat Science at Oklahoma State University, will focus on the biochemistry of dark-cutting beef and postharvest strategies to improve appearance of dark-cutting beef. Emphasis will be given on the applications of metabolomics to study metabolite profile differences between normal and dark-cutting beef and the use of modified atmospheric packaging and antioxidant technologies to improve surface color.

The AMSA 71^st RMC will be held June 24-27, 2018 at the Westin Crown Center in Kansas City, Missouri. For more information regarding the AMSA 71^st RMC please visit: http://www.meatscience.org/rmc or contact Deidrea Mabry 1-800-517-AMSA ext. 12.

Source: AMSA