The experimental design was a split plot with the four ageing treatments (A4, A4F2, A3F2 and F2) allocated to the four sections from both sides of each carcass in a saturated arrangement as illustrated in Fig. 1. Within each section, two sub-cuts from each section were randomly assigned to two different freezing treatments (either fast or slow freezing) as sub-plot. The data were analysed using the REML directive of GenStat (12th Edition, 2010; GenStat for Windows, version 12.2.0.3717,VSN International, Oxford). Treatment effects were determined using Wald statistics. Least squares means for all traits of interest were separated (F test, P b 0.05) by using least significant differences.