Meat Yield And The Effects Of Curing On The Characteristics Of Snail Meat

Abstract

Yield of different parts of snail (Archachatina marginata) was obtained by collecting 100 snails at random from Ibagwa-Aka in Igbo-Eze local Government Area of Enugu State and weighing each snail and its parts i.e. the shell, foot (edible portion) and offal (composed of the viscera, blood and slime) and the proximate composition of the edible portion (foot) was obtained. Thereafter, onekilogram portions of the foot were cured for 16h by immersing and equilibrating (under room conditions) in one liter of solution containing 0%, 10%, 20% and 30% salt. The samples were draindried after curing and analyzed. Results show that the edible portion (foot) accounted for about 38.5% of the live weight of the snail while the inedible portion accounted for more than 60%. While all parts increased quantitatively as the snail increased in size, the shell was accumulated more and at the expense of the foot and offal. Proximate analysis suggests that the moisture content (79.5%) and crude protein (18.9%) approximated those of raw beef muscle. During curing, moisture content
and water activity decreased as the concentration of salt in the curing solution increased, presumably due to osmotic dehydration. Moisture content, water activity and pH reduced further during storage. However, those samples treated with 30% salt maintained lower moisture and water
activity through storage compared with other samples. Peroxide value and total viable microorganisms increased in all samples during storage but salt treatment increased rancidity while inhibiting the growth of microorganisms.