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Abstract
Currently, in most pork chains there is still a mismatch between delivered quality and
expected quality, leading to unsatisfied customers and value losses because products are not
sold against the best possible price. Differentiation of quality of pork starts already in the
breeding stage, depends on feeding and living conditions of the animals at the farmer stage
and is also influenced by the way the animals are transported and slaughtered. At the
breeding stage a lot of research is being done that will eventually make it possible to use DNA
technology to help guide breeding programs and to better predict the quality of animals and
meat. However, because pigs are living creatures with a natural variation, 100% prediction
accuracy is not to be expected and slaughterhouses still will have to cope with a large
variation in quality characteristics, even within batches that come from the same farmer.