Pork Carcass Evaluation

Brianna Buseman Author

11/20/2020 Added

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Youth Meats Extension: This video provides information about evaluating pork carcasses for yield and quality.

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[00:00:00.120]My name is Brianna Buseman,
[00:00:01.670]and I am the Youth Needs Extension Educator,
[00:00:03.940]here at University of Nebraska.
[00:00:06.350]At UNL, we have a fully functioning meat lab,
[00:00:09.050]which provides awesome opportunities
[00:00:11.020]for our students to gain hands-on experience
[00:00:13.460]cutting meat, participating in research,
[00:00:16.090]and competing in Carcass Evaluation contests.
[00:00:19.410]This also provides a great opportunity
[00:00:21.740]to talk about market animals and the meat that they provide.
[00:00:24.920]I'm excited to share with you today,
[00:00:26.760]and I hope that you enjoyed this presentation.
[00:00:31.480]This lesson will specifically be focused
[00:00:34.120]on evaluating pork carcasses
[00:00:37.030]and prior to talking about evaluation
[00:00:39.790]or really the different parts of that pork carcass,
[00:00:42.940]we need to identify a few key terms that we will talk
[00:00:48.390]about a few times during the rest of this presentation.
[00:00:51.630]So prior to fabricating the carcass or where we cut it
[00:00:55.520]from the full carcass into the retail cuts
[00:00:59.310]that you would see like a pork chops or the slices of bacon,
[00:01:03.870]we have to first start by cutting it into primals,
[00:01:06.930]or really those large muscle sections that give us
[00:01:10.670]a better starting point to work with,
[00:01:12.380]to get to those retail cuts.
[00:01:14.670]So specifically in pork, we start with the shoulder.
[00:01:19.240]So the shoulder is this full frontal region
[00:01:22.410]and it's broken into two parts.
[00:01:24.740]The top is referred to as the shoulder or the Boston Butt,
[00:01:29.130]whereas the bottom is referred to as the Picnic.
[00:01:32.700]And I think the best way to remember this,
[00:01:34.850]is that a picnic basket has a handle
[00:01:38.050]as does the picnic shoulder.
[00:01:39.900]That's where that front leg is attached.
[00:01:42.680]And so this bottom portion referred to as the picnic.
[00:01:46.920]Then we have our loin region.
[00:01:48.990]So this is where you're gonna get your pork loin
[00:01:51.567]and a lot of your chops from, and so it starts
[00:01:55.620]with the full loin, as well as the sirloin portion.
[00:01:59.380]That's this back portion.
[00:02:01.490]We also have the leg, which once it's cured,
[00:02:04.320]it's referred to as the ham.
[00:02:06.170]So this is where your sliced ham will come from.
[00:02:11.460]And it's referred to as the leg
[00:02:13.360]or the fresh ham until it has been cured.
[00:02:16.750]Then we have our belly and this is where most of
[00:02:19.640]you guys' favorite cut of pork comes from,
[00:02:23.080]this is the money cut.
[00:02:25.040]This is where your bacon comes from.
[00:02:27.100]So that's in the belly as well
[00:02:30.010]as the spare ribs come from the belly as well.
[00:02:35.330]So when we're talking about pork evaluation,
[00:02:38.420]there's a few things that we wanna consider
[00:02:40.670]and look at a few differences in.
[00:02:43.320]The first one being trimness, or how much fat
[00:02:46.300]that that carcass actually has.
[00:02:48.630]So when we're talking about the fat,
[00:02:51.550]we want to look specifically over that loin region.
[00:02:55.480]And with pork, a lot of the excess fat can be used.
[00:02:59.220]It can actually go back into sausage
[00:03:01.610]and further processed products.
[00:03:03.640]People really, really like the flavor of pork fat.
[00:03:07.790]And so it can be used.
[00:03:09.480]However, when we're trying to get our cuts from the loin,
[00:03:13.040]so say you're trying to cut on the full pork loin
[00:03:16.340]or into pork chops, we want it to be consistent
[00:03:20.090]in terms of the amount of fat there.
[00:03:22.100]And in order to do that, we end up having to trim
[00:03:24.930]a lot of that excess fat off.
[00:03:27.750]And so when we're talking about pork evaluation,
[00:03:31.440]we prefer to see it a little bit trimmer,
[00:03:33.730]over or along that loin, to get more
[00:03:37.410]of that actual edible product that won't end
[00:03:40.680]up being served as plate waste, if it's left on, on the cut,
[00:03:44.780]or have to be used in some
[00:03:46.720]of that further processed product.
[00:03:48.800]So we can see that along the back
[00:03:50.730]and you can see differences in these two pictures.
[00:03:53.340]This one is a lot fatter all the way down that loin,
[00:03:57.130]compared to this one which you can see
[00:03:59.150]has a lot more trimness to it.
[00:04:02.090]We can also see differences
[00:04:03.750]in terms of fat over the ham collar.
[00:04:06.560]So this is our ham, that back leg
[00:04:09.360]and this, where it ties in is referred to as the collar.
[00:04:13.860]So where you're seeing that excess white,
[00:04:16.600]that is excess fat.
[00:04:18.789]And we can also see it as it ties down into that flank,
[00:04:22.290]or the belly pocket.
[00:04:24.420]So we can see a lot of excess fat there as well.
[00:04:28.700]After we look for Trimness, we look for muscling,
[00:04:32.470]and muscle, that's what converts to meat.
[00:04:35.040]That's gonna be your edible product.
[00:04:37.340]And so we really want to see a lot of shape to that carcass.
[00:04:41.220]So think about if you've shown in a pig show,
[00:04:44.570]or you've maybe a watched a sibling or a friend's show,
[00:04:48.190]think about what that judge maybe talked about on the mic,
[00:04:51.050]when judging the marketing animal show.
[00:04:53.220]They probably talked about one that had some expression
[00:04:56.560]in its leg, so we wanna see some shape,
[00:05:01.020]here in the leg.
[00:05:02.350]It may have talked about one that was wide,
[00:05:06.290]or showed some squareness across the top.
[00:05:08.960]So that's talking about in that loin region,
[00:05:11.600]we wanna see a lot of width on that carcass,
[00:05:15.950]to show that that's where there's some muscle production.
[00:05:20.030]We also may have heard about them being bold
[00:05:23.870]in their shoulder.
[00:05:25.310]And so that's really talking about the muscle
[00:05:28.170]that we see coming in that Boston butt
[00:05:31.190]and that picnic shoulder, another place where heavy muscle,
[00:05:34.790]can then turn into a lot of lean meat.
[00:05:42.320]And taking these things into account, we can predict
[00:05:46.080]and calculate the estimated percent of fat-free lean.
[00:05:50.780]And so this calculation predicts the amount
[00:05:53.600]of actual lean edible product that you can get
[00:05:56.570]from each carcass.
[00:05:58.410]And so that's saying percent of fat-free lean,
[00:06:01.620]so it's the lean or the muscle or the meat
[00:06:05.210]that has been trimmed of excess fat.
[00:06:08.540]And to determine this, we take measurements at the 10th rib.
[00:06:12.830]So at the 10th rib on the carcass, we make a cut
[00:06:15.920]and determine the back fat as well as the loin-eye area,
[00:06:20.130]so how big around that muscle is, is a good depiction
[00:06:23.580]of how much muscling is on that full carcass,
[00:06:26.460]as well as the carcass weight.
[00:06:28.400]So that's the weight of the whole carcass
[00:06:30.440]that has been hanging.
[00:06:32.330]And we get this really long equation,
[00:06:36.380]that we can plug those numbers into,
[00:06:38.550]that gives us an estimation of the pounds of lean
[00:06:42.450]or the actual pounds of product that we can get
[00:06:45.180]from that carcass.
[00:06:46.830]And to determine our percent of fat-free lean,
[00:06:49.440]we take that calculation of how many pounds
[00:06:52.870]of product we're gonna get, divided by the carcass weight,
[00:06:56.600]and times it by 100.
[00:06:58.040]And that's how we get our percent of fat free lean.
[00:07:01.820]So this is once the fat has been removed,
[00:07:05.110]the bone has been removed,
[00:07:06.670]how much actual edible product are we left with to consume.
[00:07:13.350]So looking at these measurements,
[00:07:15.490]we've already taken the weight for our hot carcass weight,
[00:07:19.150]that's done right following harvest.
[00:07:23.060]Then we take our measurement for the 10th rib back fat.
[00:07:26.360]So on this carcass, we have cut along that loin
[00:07:30.550]and exposed the loin muscle.
[00:07:33.170]So that's also known as the longismus muscle,
[00:07:36.660]and it runs all the way down on that back portion
[00:07:40.330]of the pork carcass.
[00:07:43.080]This is where you're gonna get your pork loin from,
[00:07:45.480]as well as a lot of your pork chops,
[00:07:47.680]will come from the loin.
[00:07:50.200]So we take a measurement for fat thickness,
[00:07:53.010]as well as the loin-eye area.
[00:07:56.220]So that's measuring how big around that loin is,
[00:08:00.050]how much muscle is there.
[00:08:02.760]And this is done to give us an indication
[00:08:05.090]of how much meat is going to be provided from that carcass.
[00:08:09.060]The loin is a great estimator of how much muscling
[00:08:14.550]and how much actual edible product
[00:08:18.870]that carcass will provide.
[00:08:23.150]And in the industry, it's not often that plants
[00:08:27.260]when they're harvesting thousands of hogs a day,
[00:08:31.530]are going to be able to make those cuts
[00:08:33.470]and do those measurements.
[00:08:34.910]And so that's something that we can do at a small plant,
[00:08:38.370]or during a meat judging contest.
[00:08:41.600]We may be able to make those cuts,
[00:08:43.591]to do those kinds of measurements,
[00:08:45.790]however, large-scale that isn't necessarily practical.
[00:08:50.090]So there's other equipment that can be used
[00:08:52.580]to do a similar measurement or to make a similar prediction.
[00:08:57.230]The first one uses ultrasound.
[00:09:00.160]So when that happens, the pork carcasses are actually slid
[00:09:05.240]over top of this machine.
[00:09:07.740]It uses ultrasound to determine the fat thickness
[00:09:11.380]as well as the muscling in the bone
[00:09:13.430]that are available within that carcass.
[00:09:15.990]And it can therefore determine and give you an estimate
[00:09:19.560]of the percent of fat-free lean.
[00:09:22.800]Additionally, there's a product that uses light reflectance.
[00:09:28.070]This one is referred to as the Fat-O-Meater.
[00:09:31.010]And this may not be done on every single carcass,
[00:09:34.210]but can be done in groups, just to give an idea
[00:09:37.720]of what's actually coming through the plant
[00:09:39.720]and down the line.
[00:09:41.220]So this machine actually inserts a probe through that loin
[00:09:44.990]and using light reflectance, can determine how much fat
[00:09:48.570]and how much lean is available for that carcass.
[00:09:52.440]And when we're thinking about pork production,
[00:09:55.390]within the U.S, pork production
[00:09:57.490]has become really standardized.
[00:10:00.170]The commercial production is gonna be done inside,
[00:10:04.593]there's gonna be very little variation,
[00:10:07.050]in terms of that animal's environment,
[00:10:10.060]its feed will be pretty similar,
[00:10:11.730]even genetic background is probably really similar,
[00:10:15.480]across a lot of the hogs that are within the industry.
[00:10:18.930]And so we're not necessarily going to see
[00:10:21.830]a ton of differences in terms of the amount of fat yield
[00:10:26.730]or that fat-free lean that we will see,
[00:10:29.880]however this is done just to help categorize
[00:10:34.360]and separate the carcasses that come into the plant,
[00:10:37.790]in order to make cutting or fabrication more efficient.
[00:10:43.350]Additionally, we can evaluate or look at
[00:10:45.920]some of the quality standards for pork.
[00:10:48.630]Now, pork, again, as I said, it's really consistent
[00:10:51.780]in the way that it's going to be raised.
[00:10:53.640]So we probably won't see a lot of variation
[00:10:56.960]in terms of quality grade.
[00:10:59.060]I'm starting to see more, maybe in some terms of color,
[00:11:03.720]pork used to be known as the other white meat.
[00:11:06.290]That was one of the marketing claims that it had,
[00:11:09.200]however it's going more and more away from that,
[00:11:12.360]getting some more variability in terms of marbling,
[00:11:15.510]or the intramuscular fat that can influence flavor,
[00:11:19.110]as well as color of that product.
[00:11:22.520]The main quality concern that we can see with pork,
[00:11:26.210]is known as PSE, so that's this top picture.
[00:11:30.430]And PSE is also known as pale, soft and exudated.
[00:11:36.450]This occurs when the animal was stressed, prior to harvest.
[00:11:41.490]And it causes a lot of problems, in terms of it having
[00:11:45.080]a really pale color, it's gonna be soft textured,
[00:11:48.750]so instead of really holding and being firm
[00:11:52.110]when you touch it, or are ready to cook,
[00:11:54.520]it's gonna be really, really soft, really malleable
[00:11:58.100]and it's gonna be exudated.
[00:11:59.980]So that means it's going to be losing moisture.
[00:12:03.120]And this is a big problem when you go to cook that product,
[00:12:06.950]if it's losing moisture, it's gonna become really,
[00:12:09.790]really dry.
[00:12:11.040]Additionally, it's gonna be pretty unsightly to look at.
[00:12:14.370]And so not only is it going to be not very desirable
[00:12:17.440]to want to purchase in the first place,
[00:12:19.840]but once you get it home, it can lead
[00:12:21.810]to a really poor eating experience,
[00:12:23.947]with it being a really dry, not very flavorful product.
[00:12:28.260]And so that's the biggest issue that we see
[00:12:30.050]in terms of quality,
[00:12:31.680]when we are talking about pork carcasses.
[00:12:36.700]These two pictures, or excuse me, this slide
[00:12:39.840]and the next slide, will show you two pictures
[00:12:42.890]that can show you some variation in terms of color
[00:12:45.820]of the actual pork loin.
[00:12:48.500]So this one would probably fall more within
[00:12:52.490]fat two and three category.
[00:12:55.050]So it's a little lighter colored, not bad by any means,
[00:12:58.560]not to the point where it's that pale soft and exudated
[00:13:01.680]as we talked about, but it is a little bit lighter
[00:13:04.240]in color compared to this four and five.
[00:13:10.060]This one on the other hand is a little bit darker in color
[00:13:14.130]and would probably fall more within that three
[00:13:16.660]and four range in terms of color.
[00:13:19.450]Neither are bad and neither get a premium,
[00:13:23.600]when being sold or are valued as higher, but just a couple
[00:13:28.000]of differences in order for you to see in terms
[00:13:30.270]of that quality grade or that coloring.
[00:13:33.310]And in this picture, you also really can't see any
[00:13:36.510]of that intramuscular fat or the marbling.
[00:13:39.350]So that's something that we see more of,
[00:13:41.980]but isn't necessarily going to be evident
[00:13:44.140]in every picture that we see today.
[00:13:48.890]So, to look at a few examples,
[00:13:51.520]On this one, it had a hot carcass weight of 191 pounds,
[00:13:56.000]a back fat of seven tenths of an inch,
[00:13:59.260]so that's this excess fat across from the loin-eye,
[00:14:04.130]and a loin-eye area of 8.3 square inches.
[00:14:09.220]And using that long calculation, we were able to predict
[00:14:13.950]that it would have a fat-free lean percent of 57%.
[00:14:18.600]So what that's saying is that 57% of that carcass weight,
[00:14:23.430]is coming from lean edible product.
[00:14:26.380]Or in other words, if we do their carcass weight,
[00:14:30.010]times the fat pre-lean percent, it would be about 109 pounds
[00:14:35.350]of product, 109 pounds of edible, lean meat
[00:14:40.120]that you could then see at the grocery store,
[00:14:42.240]you could take home and cook it up yourself.
[00:14:47.260]Number two, has a hot carcass weight of 174 pounds,
[00:14:51.480]so lighter than the first one, had a half of an inch
[00:14:55.440]of back fat in the loin-eye area of 8.7 inches.
[00:14:59.810]This one ended up with a 60% fat-free lean,
[00:15:03.630]or would produce about 104 pounds of edible product.
[00:15:10.370]Number three had a 204 pound, hot carcass weight.
[00:15:14.310]Eight tenths of an inch of back fat
[00:15:16.277]and a loin-eye area of 8.2.
[00:15:19.360]This one ended at a 54% fat free lean,
[00:15:23.520]giving us about 110 pounds of edible product.
[00:15:28.890]And our last one had a hot carcass weight of 223 pounds.
[00:15:33.380]So this was the heaviest carcass
[00:15:35.340]that we looked at in this group.
[00:15:37.670]It had seven tenths of an inch of back fat
[00:15:41.062]and a loin-eye area of 10.6.
[00:15:43.610]So this was also the biggest loin-eye area
[00:15:46.580]of the four pictures that we saw today.
[00:15:49.870]And it can be a little bit hard to tell in the picture,
[00:15:53.390]just from the angle that it looks at,
[00:15:54.950]it doesn't look like it's that large a loin-eye,
[00:15:57.980]but you also have to keep in mind
[00:15:59.830]that it does have seven tenths of an inch of back fat.
[00:16:02.680]So it's a lot of fat, still covering that eye.
[00:16:06.900]It ended at a percent, fat-free lean of 58%,
[00:16:11.580]giving us about 129 pounds of final product.
[00:16:16.350]And so if we're looking at the four of these together,
[00:16:19.550]we, we can really see a few differences.
[00:16:24.310]The first thing that you may notice is number two.
[00:16:27.570]Number two, had the highest percent of fat-free lean,
[00:16:31.760]but it also was the lightest carcass weight of the four.
[00:16:38.030]So it already started out as being lighter weight,
[00:16:41.478]it had the least amount of fat, but had a pretty average,
[00:16:45.357]loin-eye size, compared at least to one and three,
[00:16:48.700]I believe they were all within the eight inch range.
[00:16:51.890]So even though this one had the highest percent
[00:16:54.160]of fat-free lean, it still only ended
[00:16:56.830]with 104 pounds of final edible product.
[00:17:02.100]Four on the other hand, was the heaviest hot carcass weight,
[00:17:07.170]had a 58% fat-free lean and produced 129 pounds of product.
[00:17:13.510]So it produced the most product, but it took a lot more
[00:17:17.820]of that hot carcass weight to actually get it to that point.
[00:17:21.700]Between number, let's see here, between number two
[00:17:28.790]and number four, there was quite a difference
[00:17:31.310]in terms of their hot carcass weight.
[00:17:33.870]It ended up being right about 49 pounds difference
[00:17:38.610]between their initial hot carcass weight.
[00:17:41.800]However, it only ended up being about 25 pounds difference,
[00:17:46.260]in terms of their actual product.
[00:17:48.480]So although number two was a lot lighter of the carcass
[00:17:52.800]to start off with, it made up a lot of that weight
[00:17:57.040]by being trimmer and by being still pretty heavy muscled,
[00:18:01.890]compared to its carcass weight.
[00:18:04.430]So those are just a few things that are important
[00:18:07.090]to point out, additionally, number three was one
[00:18:11.200]of the heavier carcasses of the group.
[00:18:13.860]However, it was really fat.
[00:18:15.720]It was really fat and pretty light muscled,
[00:18:18.710]compared to his weight.
[00:18:20.330]And because of this, it only ended up
[00:18:22.300]with a 54% fat free lean.
[00:18:25.850]So this one started at a higher carcass weight,
[00:18:29.740]which gave it that more pounds at the end,
[00:18:32.480]but it had to take a lot more,
[00:18:35.580]in order to actually get it there.
[00:18:37.630]This one, it put on a lot more weight, live weight,
[00:18:41.940]it would have taken a lot more energy,
[00:18:43.750]it would've taken a lot more feed to get it to this weight,
[00:18:47.397]really to not have that much more product than number two.
[00:18:52.790]Okay, so this one had had 30 pounds of difference
[00:18:55.950]in terms of its live weight,
[00:18:57.890]but only six pounds of difference,
[00:18:59.560]in terms of its overall end product.
[00:19:02.320]And so that's something that's really important
[00:19:04.080]to keep in mind.
[00:19:05.130]A hot carcass weight is really important and we wanna
[00:19:07.940]get it, or we want there to be a lot of edible product,
[00:19:12.240]but it's also important to keep in mind,
[00:19:14.828]how does that actually transfer to edible product?
[00:19:18.520]Is that weight that you're putting onto it?
[00:19:20.940]When it's that living market animal,
[00:19:23.040]are you adding lean muscle mass,
[00:19:26.120]or are you adding additional fat that will end
[00:19:28.790]up having to be trimmed and won't necessarily
[00:19:31.520]make it to the plate of your consumer?
[00:19:34.440]With that, I wanna thank you for taking the time today
[00:19:36.810]to listen to this presentation.
[00:19:38.660]I hope that it helped make some connections
[00:19:40.500]between market animals and the meat they provide.
[00:19:43.180]If you have any questions about today's presentation,
[00:19:46.210]please feel free to reach out,
[00:19:47.770]using the contact information provided on the slide.

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Meat
Meat Science
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Pork

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Pork Carcass Evaluation

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