Dielectric properties of slaughtered and non-slaughtered goat meat

Dielectric properties of goat meat were characterized over a frequency range from 50 Hz up to 4 MHz using impedance analyzer. The dielectric dispersion as a function of post-mortem time was also investigated. The results showed that a difference in dielectric constant in the order of 106 between slaughtered and non-slaughtered meat was clearly observed even after 168 hours of post-mortem time. The magnitude of the difference in dielectric constant, however, depends very much on the frequency used. The results indicated that 10 kHz is a proper frequency to detect such a difference. The consistent difference in dielectric constant observed in this work suggests that it is possible to distinguish slaughtered and non-slaughtered goat meat by measuring its dielectric properties.