Meat Quality

Abstract

Two terms characterise the carcass and meat: carcass quality and meat quality. The former describes the yield of meat and the ratio of lean to fat and the farmer is paid for it, more directly in pigs. Meat quality describes the appearance and taste of meat and although these also vary and are arguably more important to consumers than yield, the industry does not obviously recognise this variation in terms of price differentials. Reasons for this include the difficulty of deciding where in the production-processing chain quality variation is introduced and the lack of reliable, easily-used measuring systems.