UK: New methods may improve pork quality assessments

In his PhD thesis, Paweł Piotr Suliga has developed new methods to assess pork meat quality. His methods could potentially outperform existing monitoring tools, tackling the growing quality issues in the meat industry. Pork production and demand have been steadily increasing globally the past decades. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), pork meat production was estimated to rise by 11.2% in 2021, equating to 122 million tons compared to 2020. However, the global push for rapidly growing animals has raised concerns about genetic variation and the predisposition for meat defects. While this shift has improved certain meat attributes such as low fat content, this can also reduce flavor. “Meat quality abnormalities have emerged as a costly problem for the industry,” PhD candidate Paweł Piotr Suliga explains. These abnormalities, linked to various underlying causes, manifest as inferior pork quality characterized by loose texture, ...