Introduction

• Differentiation of various species of meat is not an easy job.
• Various species of meat can be differentiated on the basis of anatomical, physical, chemical, and biochemical features.
• Similarly, meat of same species according to age, sex, breed etc. can be distinguished on the basis of several anatomical features.

Physical Characteristics

This includes general appearances of the meat. It gives the primary idea about meat species on the basis of quality.

Table 1: Quality characteristics of meat of different animals (Singh, 2008a, b, 2010; Sharma, 1999)

Chemical Characteristics

Table 2: Chemical characteristics of meat of different animal species (Lawrie and Ledward, 2006; Singh, 2008b)

Fat contents of meat

Table 3: Quality characteristics of fat of different animals (Singh, 2008a, b, 2010; Sharma, 1999)

Table 4: Differentiations of beef and buffalo meat on the basis of physical and chemical characteristics (Singh, 2008b; Singh and Sachan, 2010)

Table 5: Dental formula identification of different meat animal species