Estimation of fat and muscle content in pig carcasses : summary of various methods that can be used in swine research

Abstract

Complete anatomical dissection of carcasses for direct measurement of tissular composition is tedious and costly. Most often, fat and muscles contents are estimated from indirect measurements : backfat or muscle thickness, weights of cuts, results of partial and/or simplified dissections. Data from two populations were used to derive equations for the estimation of fat and muscle content. Four different, increasingly tedious and costly sets of measurements are described that provide increasingly accurate estimations for fat and muscle weight or percentage in half carcass as well as for muscle percentage in whole carcass (%-CEE), used for commercial grading of pig carcasses in the E.E.C. Depending on the purpose of their experiment, scientists may choose either of the four proposed sets of measurements. The equations corresponding to the two most simple sets of measurements are adequate for swine carcasses with muscle content around 50 %. However, they should be recalculated in order to fit to carcasses with muscle percentage higher then 52-53 %. The equations corresponding to the two other sets of measurements are adequate for swine carcasses with higher muscle content.