## 3 Results and Discussion
### Transport Distance (TD)  
Transport of livestock has been recognized as one of the most important pre-mortem factors affecting meat quality. Extensive handling during transport implies that animals need to expend extra energy to move and to maintain balance [48]. This can have potential effects on calpain-mediated proteolysis, glycogen amounts, and ultimate meat pH [24,48]. For instance, studies have shown that cattle transported over extreme long distances (up to 1800 km) suffer a high degree of stress, raising the probability of finding DFD-related problems in post-mortem meat. This effect was found to have been particularly intense when Jiaage time was insufficient for the animals to recover after long journeys [39,49]. Another study confirmed that bulls transported over long distances (300 km) produced meat with a significantly higher pH than bulls transported for only 125 km [50]. It was also concluded that animals transported over longer distances (850 km) exhibited higher exhaustion symptoms, increased blood glycogenysis levels, and higher meat pH in comparison with animals transported over medium distances (450 km) [48]. In our experiment, transport conditions did not appear to be a significant source of animal stress; this was likely because the young bulls were only transported average distances (shorter than 50 km) from the farms to the slaughterhouse over time periods spanning less than 2 h (Table 2). The transport conditions were also in compliance with German legislation, which states that livestock should not be transported for more than 8 h before they reach the slaughterhouse [51]. Our results agree with previous opinions, which have argued that transport times less than 6 h do not imply serious risks for meat quality [24,52]. In our experiment, it was observed that short TD (\(<\)34.5 km) resulted in significant lower pH\({}_{48}\) and lower \(L^{*}\) values, which agreed with previous publications showing the same effect in fresh beef meat [53,54]. However, a different working group found exactly the opposite effect, showing that lower pH\({}_{\text{u}}\) can cause \(L^{*}\) values to increase [27]. This contradiction in the \(L^{*}\) values found across the literature is most likely related to the pH\({}_{\text{u}}\) limits set for every experiment. It was proposed in one study that depending on the pH\({}_{\text{u}}\) range, the recorded \(L^{*}\) value can also change accordingly [53]. TD also did not show any important differences in \(a^{*}\) values; however, shorter TD was related to higher significant \(b^{*}\) and \(h_{ab}\), but not \(C^{*}\) \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c} \hline \hline  & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**Transporation Distance (TD)**} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**Animal Weight (AW)**} & \multicolumn{3}{c}{**Muscle Position (MP)**} \\ \hline
**Beef Quality** & **Rho** & **Significance (\(p\) Value)** & **Rho** & **Significance (\(p\) Value)** & **Rho** & **Significance (\(p\) Value)** \\ \hline
**pH48** & 0.225 & \(<\)0.01 & \(-\)0.12 & 0.132 & \(-\)0.429 & \(<\)0.01 \\ \hline \(L^{*}\) & 0.211 & \(<\)0.01 & \(-\)0.005 & 0.948 & 0.198 & 0.071 \\ \hline \(a^{*}\) & \(-\)0.057 & 0.476 & \(-\)0.002 & 0.981 & 0.145 & 0.068 \\ \hline \(b^{*}\) & \(-\)0.12 & 0.13 & \(-\)0.138 & 0.081 & 0.127 & 0.11 \\ \hline \(h_{ab}\) & \(-\)0.120 & 0.143 & \(-\)0.164 & 0.044 & 0.118 & 0.150 \\ \hline
**C*** & \(-\)0.174 & 0.033 & \(-\)0.049 & 0.550 & 0.136 & 0.096 \\ \hline
**WBSF** & \(-\)0.24 & 0.758 & \(-\)0.056 & 0.481 & 0.017 & 0.833 \\ \hline
**Sensory** & & & & & & \\
**Analysis** & & & & & & \\ \hline
**Odor** & \(-\)0.156 & 0.56 & \(-\)0.044 & 0.591 & \(-\)0.003 & 0.967 \\ \hline
**Taste** & \(-\)0.056 & 0.496 & 0.076 & 0.358 & 0.022 & 0.792 \\ \hline
**Hardness** & \(-\)0.08 & 0.329 & 0.027 & 0.742 & 0.313 & \(<\)0.01 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 5: Spearman nonparametric correlations (Rho) between transport distance (TD), animal weight (AW), and muscle position (MP) on beef quality and sensory attributes (single-tailed).