Meat quality of British crossbred pigs

Abstract

Data for 3356 pigs taken from the first two years of MLC's Commercial Product Evaluation were used to examine the effects of genotype (commercial crossbred pigs from different breeding companies and a purebred Large White samples), sex, feeding regimen and slaughter weight on meat quality characteristics. Muscle pH at 45 min post mortem (pH 1) and after overnight cooling (pH 2), M. longissimus colour (MLD colour) and subjective assessment of muscle condition were examined. The overall means for pH 1 and pH 2 were 6.41 and 5.81, respectively and 7.8% of pH 1 values were below 6.0. Subjective assessment indicated that 4.7% of carcasses showed signs of pale, soft, exudative muscle (PSE) and 0.1% dark, firm, dry muscle. The effect of genotype was significant on all characteristics, although the differences were small: the percentage of subjectively assessed PSE carcasses ranged from 2.2 to 8.2. The effects of sex, feeding regimen and slaughter weight were negligible. Meat quality traits were poorly correlated with carcass dissection and assessment characteristics, the highest correlations being recorded between pH 1 and ham conformation score (−0.14) and between MLD colour and M. longissimus area (+0,17).