aris wrote:Erikht,
Can you taste the difference between a stressed animal and a non-stressed one? I suppose the lactic acid must impart a flavour.
Well, I can give you one practical example. When you fry pork Eye-of-rib cutlets, bought from an ordinary supermarket(and beiing from ordinary, not particulary well treated pigs), theese will be very pale, often dry and tasteless. This is a sure sign of too much lactic acid in the meat. You find it sometimes in beef too, esp. the sirloin when roasted whole. Usually this comes out brown and crisp on the outside, deep red on the innside. But sometimes it is almost like eating those tasteless porkchops. This, too, is beacause of stress.
A way to spot it while the meat is uncoocked is a paleness in the raw meat, like it has been soaking in water. When shopping meat, I now look for the deepest red I can find, and got the best rib-roast of pork ever for christmas, simply by doing so. Didn't cost me anything extra, either.
If we return to the biltong-chat for a wee moment, I don't think meat like this would be good for biltong at all. While lactic bacterial growth helps along maturing in meat, lactic acid made in the muscle because of stress will counteract the maturing prosess.