By Geoff Geddes, for Swine Innovation Porc
Assessing pork quality is like throwing a birthday party for your two-year-old: time consuming and
messy. But as new technology is applied to many areas of production, researchers are seeking better,
more efficient options for necessary tasks. That was the impetus for the project entitled Application
of rapid methods of non-invasive assessment of pork quality.
“There’s a need today to develop technology that assesses meat quality in a non-invasive manner,”
said Dr. Claude Gariépy, meat quality scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC).
“Currently they have to take a sample of the meat and run different chemical tests. If the means were
available to predict quality without contact, it could reduce the cost and time involved while preserving
the integrity of the cuts, and that would be huge for the industry.”
Two technologies - nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and hyperspectral imaging - have been assessed
for this purpose.
No such thing as too much information
“NMR technology is similar to MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), which most people are familiar
with. The difference is that NMR gives you information on the entire sample rather than separate
information on individual volume elements,” said Dr.Marie-Rose Van Calsteren, honorary scientist and
NMR specialist with AAFC.
Though more study is needed, preliminary results show promising relationships with water holding
capacity, including drip loss, cooking loss and meat color.
A system you can lean on
Another part of the project is looking at mechanisms for determining meat composition by examining
water, lipid and protein content or the amount of lean meat and fat in the sample. For this approach,
Van Calsteren said they’ve had very good results, especially for the lean/fat method.
“We’re seeing strong correlations and a big time saving, where analysis that used to take days can
now be done in 45 seconds. The implications for processing or slaughter plants are significant.”
As well, the power of NMR could be enhanced by a separate sub-project under Dr. Michael Ngadi at
McGill University on hyperspectral imaging. Mimicking commercial conditions, researchers used
the imaging to scan loin samples and determine the intramuscular fat content in both frozen and
thawed pork loins.
“We’re going to compare the two approaches [NMR and hyperspectral imaging] to see if they
might be complementary as far as what information they can provide.”
Fat tracking
On a third front, the project seeks to improve the measuring of fat consistency to accommodate
changes in how pigs are raised.
“Because of genetics and new approaches to feed, carcasses are getting leaner and the fat is becoming
less saturated and less firm,” said Gariépy.
“This causes problems with processing equipment, especially for slicing bacon, and the softer fat
tends to oxidize faster, reducing its shelf life with retailers. Being able to identify problematic bellies
ahead of time can save a lot of trouble.”
Made to measure
In applying some of the technology from this project to a plant setting, the possibilities are numerous.
“This could allow the plant to measure a lot of samples in a short amount of time and direct the meat
or fat accordingly, depending on the market for which it’s best suited; for example, sending darker
color cuts with more marbling to Japan,” said Gariépy.
Since intramuscular fat can’t be assessed visually, the ability to determine various components of meat
composition with non-invasive techniques has great potential.
“At the moment, we are running regular tests with the NMR equipment, correlating a great deal of information
in the signals with meat quality parameters. If plants can use that technology to test samples
rather than sending them to an external lab, they could preserve that sample and still get value
from it rather than sacrificing it for testing.”
They can’t help with your two-year-old’s party, but if researchers tap even part of the potential for this
technology, they may give the industry something to celebrate.
Source : Swine Innovation Porc