A screening experiment to identify factors causing rancidity during meat loaf production

A screening experiment consisting of 18 batches of meat loaves were made using a fractional factorial design with six factors including two production replicates i.e. testing of several factors in relatively few trials. The rancidity was detected by TBARS, volatile compounds by GC-MS and sensory analysis by a sensory panel. The results were presented graphically as formal statistical testing is limited. To do this the multivariate results from GC-MS and sensory analyses were made univariate by statistical tools. Pre-salting meat and storing it in frozen air, will result in rancid meat, and regardless pre-salting or not ascorbic acid will act as a pro-oxidant when added into already rancid meat and stored frozen. The three methods used to detect rancidity in meat loaves resulted sometimes in discrepancy in the results. Further research has to be done to verify if these findings were due to development of different oxidation products due to the combinations of factors or if these were outliers.