Materials and methods
A survey of 541 consumers was conducted in two Australian cities,
Canberra and Dubbo, over a number of consecutive days. In
Canberra the survey was conducted over 4 days at a meat retail
outlet, whereas at Dubbo it was conducted over 3 days at an agricultural
fair. To minimise the bias the same refrigerated cabinet
was used and the same two interviewers conducted all interviews
in the two cities.
Consumers were asked to answer questions in two sections;
Section 1. Demographics: including gender, age class, whether the
respondent consumed lamb (and if they did how many times per
week lamb was consumed) and did they purchase lamb.
Section 2. To assess twenty lamb loin (m longissimus thoracis et
lumborum; LL) samples. These samples were a 2–3 cm cross section
of the muscle with no bone or subcutaneous fat. Ten of the samples
were for testing consumer response to fresh colour and ten to test
consumer response to lamb colour during extended display.
Respondents were asked to score each sample on a 1–5 ordinal
scale with 1 = very acceptable, 2 = acceptable, 3 = mildly acceptable,
4 = unacceptable and 5 = very unacceptable.