PHD, Kent State University, 2020, College of Arts and Sciences / School of Biomedical Sciences

Background: Animal agriculture is an industrialized, globalized system of meat production that will continue to increase in demand through the 21st century. This is a greatly resource intensive process that produces greenhouse gases and zoonotic disease development that contribute to climate change and public health pandemics. Since the demand for meat shows no sign of slowing in the coming years, alternative methods of meat production are required to feed a growing human population. Cell-based meat is one possible solution, which is meat grown from cell culture technology. Cell-based meat can be grown from developing edible cell lines and expanding them in bioreactors using biomedical techniques and equipment. The field in in its infancy, however, and many questions remain about how to develop useful cell lines and which are the most effective ways to grow them. This work demonstrates a research framework from which to characterize and compare two of the main cell types in meat: skeletal muscle cells and intramuscular fat cells. Methods were developed to analyze the difference between porcine and bovine cells, what characterizes their sensory and pigment properties, and how to efficiently grow them skeletal muscle tissue form. Methods: Bovine and porcine myoblasts and intramuscular fibroblast were isolated from the hind leg of 2 month old pigs and cows. Myoblasts were used for myogenesis assays, and intramuscular fibroblasts were used for adipogenesis assays. Gene and protein expression and volumetric hypertrophy data was obtained for myoblasts and lipid staining was quantified for fibroblasts. Meat color and pigment was determined for pork, beef, and cultured cells using colorimetry. Myoglobin gene and protein expression was assessed during myogenesis assays with and without electrical stimulation, mimicking an exercise regimen. Conditioned media from polarized porcine macrophages was used to characterize the potential for developing serum free media for myobl (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Min-Ho Kim Dr. (Advisor); Kristy Welshhans Dr. (Committee Member); Oleg Lavrentovich Dr. (Committee Member); Feng Dong Dr. (Committee Member); Songping Huang Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Biomedical Engineering; Biomedical Research; Food Science

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2022, Agricultural Communication, Education and Leadership

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the meat industry in Ohio struggled to meet the increased demand for meat products that was coupled with a labor shortage. Therefore, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Lt. Governor Jon Husted created the Ohio Meat Processing Grant Program. The grant has the purpose of upgrading equipment, improving efficiency, and training. However, while a number of meat processors are receiving funding, the state of Ohio has yet to increase the number of educational opportunities available to train meat processors on meat cutting, food safety, government regulations, and business management. Additionally, assessments have not been made to assess the productivity and transfer of learning happening in the current meat science-related educational opportunities available. Therefore, the study's objectives were to 1) describe participants' age, experience levels, degree of transfer of learning and preferences with instructional format in a meat-science-related workshop or class; 2) describe the differences in preferred instructional format and degree of transfer of learning between participants' learner classifications (young adult versus adult); and 3) describe the relationship between participants' years of experience and degree of transfer of learning in a meat science-related workshop or class. Convenience sampling was used to select participants from the 2021 Ohio State University meat cutting clinic program and the Food Animal Processing undergraduate class All groups covered the same material in formal class lectures and non-formal labs. A survey was used as an instrument to measure knowledge, perceptions, and comfort with the information that was taught throughout the clinics and class. It was found that 94.1% of the respondent population self-identified as adult learners. When looking into experience the majority of the respondents had less than 10 years of experience in the meat industry with an average age of 35 years. The participan (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Annie Specht (Advisor); Lyda Garcia (Committee Member); Dee Jepsen (Committee Member) Subjects: Adult Education; Agricultural Education; Agriculture; Communication; Pedagogy; Teaching

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2020, Animal Sciences

Cull cows represent a significant percentage of the revenue received from the U.S. beef industry, however, cull cows are often heavily price discounted at time of slaughter due to decreased body condition scores, carcass yield and quality and increased yellow fat color as a result of a prolonged high vitamin A diet. This study's objective is to evaluate different feeding strategies and their effects on body condition score, external fat color, carcass yield and quality traits in cull cows. The central hypothesis is feeding a high energy diet, with low levels of Vitamin A, for 56 days will improve animal performance, carcass yield and quality traits in addition to capturing the point (rate) of the conversion of yellow to white external fat. In the present study 86 Angus crossbreed cows, culled from two Ohio State University farms were utilized. Cows were fed either low vitamin A diet (LVA) consisting of whole shelled corn, soybean hulls, soybean meal and a mineral-vitamin supplement or a high vitamin A diet (HVA) diet, formulated using whole shelled corn, fescue hay, DDGS and a mineral-vitamin supplement for 56 days. During the 56 day feeding period, weights, body condition scores, and subcutaneous adipose samples were collected every 14 days. On days 56, cattle were slaughtered; 48 hours postmortem carcass characteristics and objective color scores were recorded and a sample of the longissimus dorsi lumborum was collected. Subcutaneous adipose tissue samples were utilized to record subjective color scores and then ground to be analyzed via HPLC for beta-carotene concentration. The longissimus dorsi lumborum samples were sliced into 2.54cm steaks, one of which was utilized to perform WBSF testing, the other was ground and utilized for pH testing. After results were gathered, data was analyzed via a proc mixed model of SAS. Feeding cull cows a low vitamin A diet resulted in significant differences in external carcass fat color (P = 0.01) as well as objective b* val (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Lyda Garcia Dr. (Advisor); Stephen Boyles Dr. (Committee Member); Alejandro Relling Dr. (Committee Member); Kopec Rachel Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Agriculture; Animal Sciences; Animals; Food Science; Livestock