Manually operated portable equipment for measurement and classification of fresh pork belly firmness

Abstract

The single most important characteristic of a pork belly, which is the most valuable pork carcass primal in North America, is its degree of firmness. To date, firmness evaluation has either been subjective and therefore variable, or require 1–5 min for an objective assessment in the latter stages of fresh production. The invention is a machine for rapid and standardized measurement of fresh pork belly firmness as soon as the belly is removed from either the left or right side of the carcass. The equipment is manually operated, compact, portable, and has the flexibility to be adapted to long or short bellies across a wide range of carcass weights. Although designed to be used with rib-in bellies, it can also be used with ribbed bellies. Firmness categorization rather than measurement can be achieved by careful placement of bracing in the angle gauge. As it is constructed from approved food safe materials, the invention can be used in meat production areas and fully washed down with other equipment at the end of the production day. The invention is designed for data collection in either scientific or industry meat research. Benefiters include meat scientists, pork packers, and swine breeding companies.