Fat is important to all aspects of meat production and processing. Fresh and frozen meat prepared for manufacturing purposes is specified in terms of fat content (expressed as chemical lean). This is an important specification of commercial trading as well as being an important technical specification for product end-use. Manufacturing meat that is traded as a commodity on the international market is specified in terms of its fact content (expressed as chemical lean) and this is one of the primary product testing criteria for product imported by our overseas customers.
Apart from the commercial importance of the fat content of unprocessed meat, especially manufacturing meat, fat content is an important technical and regulatory specification for almost all processed meat products. There are several rapid methods for determining the fat content of meat and meat products and these methods mostly produce results that are sufficiently accurate and reliable for routine product testing purposes. Given the importance of fat content however as a commercial and regulatory specification, it is necessary to have a method that is recognised as a standard and which can be referred to as a means of validating rapid methods and in dispute resolution processes.
The “Soxhlet” method described here is recognised by the Association of Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC) as the standard method for crude fat analysis. In addition, some rapid instrumental methods are also approved by the AOAC.
No comments:
Post a Comment