| MadSci Network: Agricultural Sciences |
James,
It is true that prolonged stress prior to slaughter can cause physiological changes in muscle tissue. An example that is a little closer to home than dolphin meat in Japan would be the problem of dark cutters in U.S. beef packing plants.
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"If the animal is stressed for long durations for any reason then glycogen
concentration can fall to less than 0.6% and normal acidification of the
muscle tissue from lactic acid does not occur and pH will remain high (above
6.0). This abnormally high pH (>6.0) increases the light-absorption and
water binding abilities of postmortem muscle resulting in an undesirable,
dark, firm, and dry cut lean surface (Lister, 1988). This causes the muscle
to turn a darker color of red, almost dark purple, hence the term dark cutter.
There also appears to be a relationship between muscle pH and (or) muscle
color and meat tenderness (Purchas, 1990). Dark cutting beef is undesirable
because it has low consumer appeal and is more susceptible to microbial growth
(Lawrie, 1998)."
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| From : Holmgren LN and ZoBell DR. Reducing the Incidence of Dark Cutting Beef in Junior Lifestock Shows. Utah State University Extension. September 2005. http://extension.usu.edu/cyberlivestock/downloads/darkcutmeat.pdf |
As stated in the quoted section, the dark cutters are undesirable to American consumers and therefore all attempts are made at the feedlot/packers to insure that animals are not unduly stressed prior to slaughter.
The question of whether or not stress and the subsequent physiological responses improve the quality of the end product is purely cultural. Many cultures have foodstuffs that they consider delicacies, which we as Americans would not consider eating and vise versa. Thus the practices used to process those animals for food will be regulated on the local and in some cases global paradigms of animal welfare.
I hope this helps
Forrest
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