Relationship between potassium content and composition of live lambs and subsequent carcasses
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"The expected population increase over the next several years will likely result in an increased need for meat. This being the case, there will be a greater demand for more efficient production of meat. In the past emphasis has been placed on the production of pounds of live lamb, rather than on the production of pounds of lean meat. This has resulted in a tendency for producers to overfeed lambs and produce excess fat. However, over the past few years consumers have demanded leaner meats, and this demand has been intensified by their reluctance to pay high prices for unwanted excess fat. The greatest variable influencing the retail yield and value of slaughter lambs is fat. As meat animals grow and mature, their bodies undergo various changes in composition, namely the percentage of moisture in their bodies is reduced and the percentage of fat is increased (Hankins, 1947). Carcasses from younger lambs are more likely to be tender, have less excess fat, and require less intermingling of fat with lean for a given quality grade (Meyer, 1965). In order to produce the type of animal, which will satisfy the consumer’s increasing desires for leaner meats of high quality, it is necessary to develop better means for determining the whole-body composition of not only slaughter animals, but also breeding animals. To do this, it would be desirable to develop a method, which has sufficient accuracy to predict the composition of live animals, carcasses, and component parts. Therefore the objectives of this study were: (1) to determine the degree of accuracy with which the composition of live animals, carcasses, and their component parts could be predicted from the gamma emission of potassium-40; and (2) to determine the relationship between total potassium determined from potassium-40 and carcass measurements, carcass cut-out, and chemical analysis values."--Introduction.
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