An Innovative Detection of Mechanically Separated Meat in Meat Products

In meat products, mechanically separated meat (MSM) is often used as a raw material. Usage of MSM has economic benefit for meat industries and height utilization of animal raw material. In opposite is consumer concern for height quality of meat products. In order to detect MSM, invasive/destructive methods are mainly used and their nature is largely based on demonstrating the accompanying substances or structures. This paper describes a new non-invasive method to detect bone fragments as accompanying structures of MSM and it is based on X-ray micro computed tomography (μCT). μCT method was tested on a cooked meat product containing 50% of MSM. Bone tissue detected based on the higher density via μCT was confirmed by the image analysis and histochemical method using alizarin red staining which is used for detection of bone tissue. The μCT method was verified as a suitable non-destructive method to analyze bone fragments in meat products with the possibility to determine their shape parameters.