Development of technology for the early post mortem prediction of water holding capacity and drip loss in fresh pork

Two different technologies were tested on the slaughterline for their abili ty to predict drip loss at 24 h, namely near infrared reflectance (NIR) and impedance measurements using a tetra polar measuring geometry at a frequen cy of 1000 Hz. The results demonstrate that NIR measurements (900-1800 nm) acquired during a 6 min period starting only 30 min post exsanguination thr ough a fibre optic probe in combination with multivariate data analysis can be used for predicting drip loss 24 h after slaughter. A correlation highe r than 0.8 was observed for a trial on 99 carcasses measured at a commercia l slaughterhouse. The tetrapolar impedance measurements did not perform as well as NIR yielding a correlation of 0.5 with 24 h drip loss. (C) 2000 Els evier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.