Abstract
Four manual classification devices for estimating pork carcass meat content, i.e. CGM, Fat-OMeat’er II, IM-03 and UltraFom 300 were tested. The experiment was carried out with properly selected raw material (n=141 pigs) from current deliveries for pig slaughter at the Meat Plant SKIBA S.A. in Chojnice. Pork raw material was derived from three different Polish regions and represented different types of fatness, different carcass weights (from 60 to 120 kg) and different sexes (half were gilts and half were barrows). The applied testing procedure was consistent with European Union regulations. The research resulted in the development of regression equations for estimating pork carcass meat content in Poland. These equations are of rectilinear type and use four (in the case of UltraFom 300) or two (in the case of other devices) measurements of backfat and longissimus dorsi muscle thickness located at a distance of 6 cm (CGM, IM-03) or 7 cm (Fat-OMeat’er II, UltraFom 300) from the backfat edge at the section between 3rd and 4th rib, counting ribs from the end (CGM, IM-03, Fat-O-Meat’er II) and also at the height of the last rib section (UltraFom 300). The prediction error does not exceed the termination value of 2.50% established by EU regulations and amounts to 2.16% for CGM, 2.18% for Fat-O-Meat’er II, 1.89% for IM-03 and 2.07% for UltraFom 300. New regression equations have been applied in the meat industry since 12 December 2011.