Keeping Quality of Rabbit Meat Floss Prepared with Different Oils and Stored in Three Packaging Materials

Meat floss is a dehydrated ready-to-eat meat product most commonly produced from beef. Due to increasing consumer awareness about health, there is interest in healthier alternatives like rabbit meat. In this study, meat floss was produced from rabbit meat using three cooking oils: Refined Palm Oil (RPO), Soya Oil (SO) and Canola Oil (CO). The iodine number of each of the three oil types was determined before use. The resulting Rabbit Meat Floss (RMF) was packed in three materials: Aluminium Foil (AF), Ziploc (ZPL) and Polypropylene (PP). The RMF were stored at room temperature and analysed for sensory properties and Thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) on days 7, 14 and 21 of storage. The study was a 3 by 3 factorial experiment fitted into a completely randomised design and replicated three times. The refined RFO had the highest iodine number (81.05), and CO had the least (69.57). Following interactions among storage days, oil type and packaging material, TBARS was significantly highest (P<0.05) on day 7 for RMF from CO stored in ZPL (8.44mgMDA/Kg). The RMF from SO stored in AF had the lowest TBARS on Day 21 (2.57mgMDA/Kg). There were no significant differences in sensory properties throughout the experimental period.