On Food and Cooking

Pheasant 35

The Transformation
of Muscle into Meat

The first step in meat production is to raise a
healthy animal. The second step is to
transform the living animal into useful
portions of its flesh. The ways in which this
transformation occurs affect the quality of the
meat, and can explain why the same cut of
meat from the same store can be moist and
tender one week and dry and tough the next.
So it’s useful to know what goes on in the
slaughterhouse and packing plant.

Slaughter

The Importance of Avoiding Stress By a
fortunate coincidence, the methods of
slaughter that result in good-quality meat are
also the most humane. It has been recognized