Thirty Zebu steer carcasses were selected at
Sao Paulo, Brazil commercial slaughter facility
on the basis of A, C or E USDA beef carcass
maturity standards. The longissimus muscle of
the short loin was excised 7 days postmortem,
and a 2.54-cm steak was removed for Warner-
Bratzler shear evaluation. The remaining
portion of the meat was vacuum-packaged and
stored an additional 14 days. At that time,
another 2.54-cm steak was removed for Warner-
Bratzler shear evaluation. After cooking, hand
cores were taken parallel to the orientation of
the majority of the muscle fibers, and another
set from the same steak was taken by machine,
perpendicular to the steak's cut surface, without
regard to muscle fiber orientation. There were
no differences (P>.10) in shear force values
between steaks from different maturity groups,
regardless of coring method. Simple correlation
coefficients between coring methods across
maturity groups were .81 and .80 (P<.001) for
steaks cut 7 and 21 days postmortem, respectively.
Spearman rank correlation coefficients
for the same data were .84 and .75 (P<.001).
Warner-Bratzler shear tests on longissimus
muscle cores obtained by either coring method
resulted in the same relative data interpretation.
