IF YOU like a tasty slab of meat, make sure you place your orders soon. Pork chops will become soggier and paler as the world warms, warn veterinary scientists, and steaks could be dark and smelly.
This is because meat quality depends in part on whether animals experience heat stress during transport to the slaughterhouse. of the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, UK, who studies how the temperature at which animals are kept affects the quality of their meat, has looked ahead to meat in a climate-changed world (Food Research International, ).
After an animal dies, energy reserves 鈥� in the form of glycogen 鈥� are broken down into lactic acid, causing the carcass鈥檚 pH to fall from 7.0 to 5.5. But the meat of heat-stressed pigs acidifies more quickly. When this happens, muscle proteins fall apart, and as a result so does the meat鈥檚 structure. 鈥淲hat you鈥檙e left with is meat that resembles soggy white blotting paper,鈥� says Gregory.
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Steak, on the other hand, is likely to be smellier. Heat-stressed cows run out of glycogen before they die, which darkens their meat, turning it almost black. And glycogen-free beef attracts microbes that break down protein and give off the smell of decay.