Consumer liking
Consumers evaluated different characteristics for the three types of beef under study, as described previously. Participants were not given information about the meats they were going to taste (just that they were three types of beef) and therefore they did not know anything about the different production systems, origins or prices that were later evaluated in the conjoint analysis. It must be therefore assumed that the ratings of global acceptance granted in the sensory analysis to cooked beef are due to the production systems evaluated, which affected the sensory characteristics of the meat. Thus, we will compare in this section the results obtained from the sensory assessment, where different attributes of interest for consumers were evaluated (Table 3).
The colour of raw meat from an OC production system was the least valued (p b 0.001). Sensory evaluation of cooked meat showed a difference in OG beef when compared to the other meats under study, with consistent lower values for all the attributes evaluated.