The Lacombe Research and Development Centre is part of a research project with Swine Innovation Porc (SIP) to generate research, commercial testing, and cost estimates of different technologies for online pork classification based on the proposed Canada Pork International quality rating’s system.
The new tools are to improve and standardize the classification of Canadian pork will improve the ability of processors to meet the quality demands of international customers.
Scientists working in partnership with SIP will create new tools to assist the Canadian pork sector in developing a standardized pork classification system based on the quality attributes most desired by export customers.
Dr. Manuel Juárez, a Livestock Phenomics Scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada at the Lacombe Research and Development Centre, said the goal is to expand on existing grading standards.
“The original idea was to start with the loin because it is still the standard today. To guarantee the buyer there wouldn’t be any PSE, or Pale Soft Exudative, or low-quality pork in the shipment as the seller had guaranteed this grade of quality from Canada,” said Dr. Juárez. “The second stage would go farther, able to guarantee a minimum colour and marbling for those primals going to buyers willing to pay a premium. The next phase would do something similar with all the primals, the bellies, shoulders, and the hams.”
The research team is focusing on that concept, developing ideas, working with the packers, identifying quality traits that have value. Then to work with different technologies that have the potential to provide this information in processing plants with different volumes.

“The idea is to come up with a series of approaches and technologies that will be able to classify primals based on specific quality traits to guarantee that quality to the buyer,” he said.
Dr. Juárez said individual companies are taking this approach, sometimes using subjective measures, using available technologies.
“Expanding this common approach will enhance the Canadian pork label around the world as a high-quality product for buyers.”
Juarez said the Canada Pork International rating system is not as much a grading system as in the past, but a classification system that could help Canadian companies to ensure certain levels of quality for the international buyers.
Dr. Juarez said the system from CPI is a concept without the details or even tools to implement it, so it needs research of this type to be able to get to the point of implementation.
“On the carcass side, we work with technologies like near-infrared spectroscopy and developing a system to classify pork bellies based on quality,” he said. “We already know the near-infrared spectroscopy is an outstanding technology, decreased in price, and has become more available in recent years. So we know that this technology has great potential. For the pork belly, maybe we are more advanced than for other primal cuts. We have three different technologies, three different prices, of line speed that applied in the processing plants to classified bellies based on softness. Like maybe the biggest defect, right now for pork bellies, or the main traits to classify by.”
Currently, the research team and industry is quite advanced in the belly with useful information about the loin maybe even able to predict loin quality from the primals, or even from other parts of the carcass.
“At this point, we have already the information from; I would say, depending on the primal, between 1500 to 2000 carcasses. We are in a good place for those two primals, and we have started working on shoulders and hams. We have information about those primals, and we’re considering different technologies,” said Dr. Juarez. “Once we test the technology here, then we go to a commercial plant. And we are trying different commercial plants with different line speed, with different carcass classifications, with different markets. We test the technology, and we come back to the lab, and with more data, and with more concepts to be able to provide the technologies that those plants require.”
Once the technology is ready, the advantage of doing it this way, by testing and validating in the commercial plants is threefold.
First, the team will be able to adapt any requirement for those packers. Since the packers are working with the technology in the plants becoming familiar with it, they will have a chance to use and test it.
Once this is complete, it will speed up the adoption of technologies by those users, which is the real goal of the study. •
—By Harry Siemens