DXA Measures Meat, Fat Composition in
Pork By Sharon
Durham January 12, 2004
With growing consumer interest in leaner meat, meat packers have
looked for technology that efficiently shows how much lean meat or fat is in a
commercial cut. That technology may be closer than ever, based on
Agricultural Research Service animal
scientist Alva Mitchell's work with dual x-ray absorptiometry, or DXA.
In lab tests, DXA images accurately showed the composition of
pork carcasses. This procedure, noninvasive and quick, is based on using x-rays
of differing energy levels to scan for soft tissue of differing densities,
according to Mitchell, at the ARS
Growth Biology Laboratory in
Beltsville, Md.
The DXA instruments that Mitchell used scanned carcass
cross-sections at a speed of 7.68 centimeters per second, compared to the
processing chain speed of 16.6 centimeters per second. Mitchell's next step is
to find a commercial packing plant to test the technology at commercial
speeds.
This new technology would help the industry continue to
modernize. U.S. hog production has already undergone significant changes over
the last century. In the first half of the 20th century, market hogs were bred
for lard that found many uses, including as a resource during both World
Wars.
About midway through the century, however, consumers began
looking for leaner meat with great nutrition but less fat and fewer calories.
The pork industry responded by breeding animals for leanness. The difficulty,
however, was in discerning the lean-to-fat ratio throughout a carcass without
cutting into it.
Using DXA would allow packers to know just what they are paying
for--that is, the true value of the meat, without the fat that gets cut off
before shipping.
Read more
about this research in the January issue of Agricultural Research
magazine.
ARS is the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's chief scientific research agency. |