Colour of muscle from 18-month-old steers given long-term daily exercise

Darker beef from pasture-fed compared with grain-fed cattle may result from differences in physical activity rather than differences in nutrition. The objective was to determine if steers that were exercised produced darker meat than non-exercised steers and whether any effect was muscle-related. Exercised steers were walked 4.41 km daily in a single bout, six days per week for 18 weeks at an average speed of 5.2 km h−1. All steers were fed grass silage on an ad libitum basis plus 6 kg concentrates. Following slaughter, muscle colour coordinates (‘L’ (lightness), ‘a’ (redness) and ‘b’ (yellowness) values) of M. longissimus dorsi (LD), M. semimembranosus (SM) and M. extensor carpi radialis (ECR) were recorded at 48 h postmortem and redness and yellowness were used to calculate muscle hue (‘H’) and colour intensity/saturation (‘C’). The pH of all muscles was measured at 1.5, 3, 6, 22 and 48 h postmortem and LD samples were recovered (90 min postmortem) for glycolytic potential (GP) assessment. Exercise did not affect muscle lightness, yellowness, hue or colour intensity. However, LD was the darkest (P < 0.001) and SM the most saturated (P < 0.001) muscle. Exercise affected muscle redness in a muscle-dependent manner (muscle × exercise, P = 0.038) whereby ECR became more red with exercise but LD and SM were unaffected. There were muscle × time (P < 0.001) and time × exercise (P = 0.045) interactions for muscle pH. The ECR muscle had the highest pH at all times. The exercised steers had higher (P < 0.05) LD muscle pH than control steers at 3 and 6 h postmortem. Exercise did not affect myoglobin concentration, which was muscle dependent, decreasing in the order: SM (6.72 mg/g) > ECR (6.33 mg/g) > LD (5.48 mg/g), which were all different (P < 0.001). Exercise had no effect on GP in LD muscle (111 vs. 99 μmol/g for control and exercised steers, respectively; SED = 6.6 μmol/g). It was concluded that although application of exercise did not affect muscle lightness and thus, did not cause ‘darker’ meat, it did affect muscle redness in a muscle-dependent manner.