AgWired

When it comes to testing food, it’s all the senses that count, not just taste.

“That’s because there’s only about four things we can taste,” says Dr. Ken Prusa with Iowa State University. “Sweet, salty, sour and bitter.”

Which makes taste alone a pretty limited factor in the total experience of how we perceive a food. In fact, we use all of our senses when we judge whether we like or dislike food products.

Dr. Prusa is the professor-in-charge of the Sensory Evaluation Unit at ISU where a group of ag editors were trained to be “sensory panelists” during a workshop this week sponsored by Elanco Animal Health. We specifically learned to evaluate meat by tenderness, juiciness and flavor – more on that in the above post.

Listen to my interview with Dr. Prusa here:

Read more on the Beef Quality Center website.

Designing trials for a new animal health product to evaluate meat quality is expensive and complicated, according to Dr. Floyd McKeith with the University of Illinois Department of Animal Sciences. He was one of the speakers at a workshop for ag editors this week in Ames, Iowa sponsored by Elanco Animal Health.

According to Dr. McKeith, some of the factors to be considered when designing such a trial include breed type, geographic region, season, yearling versus calf-fed, time on feed, implant history, steers versus heifers, and the diet of the animals. “Ultimately, you want to understand how well that product will perform under a variety of conditions for a variety of producers,” he said.

McKeith says these trials cost companies like Elanco millions of dollars, but most often they go above and beyond what is necessary to make sure their product is safe and effective for the producers, the animals, and consumers.

Listen to my interview with Dr. McKeith here:

Read more on the Beef Quality Center website.

Bringing an animal health product to market requires a lot of testing – not just on how that product affects the animal, but also how it affects the meat that comes from that animal.

That’s what a group of farm media folks, including myself, learned about this week at Iowa State University in Ames, courtesy of Elanco Animal Health. Pictured here is Grady Bishop of Elanco giving our group an overview of why we were there, why they were there and what we would be doing. Grady says that since Elanco Animal Health is a participant in the food chain, the main purpose was to provide some perspective for journalists on how they are helping the livestock industry produce safe and healthy food with a focus on quality and consumer satisfaction.

Listen to my interview with Grady here:

Read more on the Beef Quality Center website.