Postmortem Injection of Calcium Chloride Improves Camel meat Tenderness

Twenty-four hours postmortem longissimus muscles of camel carcasses were injected to 0 (control), 200 and 300 mM food grade CaCl2 at 10 % (wt/wt), vacuum- packaged and stored at 2ºC for 6 days. Drip loss, cooking loss, sarcomere length, and shear force were determined. At 6 days post-treatment, samples with CaCl2 had higher (P <0.05) drip loss compared to non-injected ones, however; cooking loss was not affected (P>0.05). Muscle sarcomere length was not significantly affected (P>0.05) but shear force values for treated samples were lower (P <0.05) than those of controls with ratios varied from 23.4 % and 32.4 % lower for the 200 and 300 mM injections, respectively, and therefore; calcium chloride injection is an effective method for improving camel meat tenderness