Taints

Taints are sensory impressions of off-flavour or off-odour in a product. Food taints include warmed-over flavour in ready meals — reheated meat turning stale and cardboard-like from lipid oxidation — and boar taint in pork from entire males, caused by androstenone and skatole. Detecting taints requires trained sensory panels and often gas-chromatography confirmation, since the compounds responsible are potent at trace levels. Prevention, through packaging, antioxidants, ingredient control, and animal management, is far cheaper than cure. Trained panels and chemical analysis together identify the source when consumers complain.