Prédiction de la qualité sensorielle de la viande bovine: Une approche novatrice pour mieux répondre aux attentes des consommateurs et des acteurs de la filière

The decline in consumption of beef is due to societal concerns related to the environment and animal welfare, concerns about human health, but also its purchase price and the uncontrolled and inconsistent variability of its eating quality, as shown by consumer surveys. Sensory quality depends on many factors prior to slaughter, related to farming practices, breed, sex and age of the animal. It also results to a large extent from slaughter conditions, carcass characteristics (pH, marbling, etc.), meat cutting and processing as well as biological changes that occur in the muscle during meat ageing and cooking. Carcass and meat grading systems take little account of these factors, with the exception of the Meat Standards Australia (MSA) system developed in Australia. The principles of the MSA system have been studied in Europe, considering the specificities and diversity of livestock production systems, as well as consumer preferences in several European countries. These studies were carried out as part of more than five collaborative projects with the Institut de l'Elevage and the Beauvallet company, including the ANR-funded EcoRegMeat3G project and the European INTAQT project, both led by INRAE. The work of five PhD students, all supervised or co-supervised by researchers from UMR Herbivores of INRAE also contributed to this work. This research led to 1) the development of the 3G (Global Guaranteed Grading) system piloted by the International Meat 3G Foundation established and managed with the support of INRAE, 2) the contribution to the creation of new recommendations on beef quality by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and 3) the contribution to the launch and development of a new premium beef brand by the Beauvallet company (OR ROUGE) in the Limousin region and, 4) the international development of the 3G method particularly in Europe.