A pill a day could eventually solve the problem of increasingly drier and tougher pork, says an American animal physiologist.
“Animals are so lean and so the fat deposition has decreased so much,” said Gary Hausman, a scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in Athens, Georgia.
“You’ve started losing some of the quality because of that.”
Hausman and his colleagues have developed a method to potentially increase marbling fat levels in hogs.
“It’s orally active,” he said. “We put a pill in something that was really palatable and they (the pigs) ate it.”
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Hausman fed hogs a feed additive created from various compounds for 30 days before slaughter. After the first sampling, Hausman said marbling fat in tested hogs had increased by up to 3.5 percent.
“It was really a marked increase.”
Marbling is the fat woven within the muscles of an animal.
Less marbling means less flavour and juiciness in the meat.
For years, breeders have attempted to reduce the amount of fat in animals to meet consumer diet demands. Hausman said leaders in the American pork industry want to revert to meat with more marbling.
“Poor quality has been indicated by the National Pork Board as one of the top priorities,” Hausman said.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves portions of the compound, called thiazolidinediones, for human use to control glucose levels in diabetics, but the feed additive will not be found on the market any time soon.
Hausman said none of the compounds are FDA-approved for changing the composition of livestock feed.
“The rationale for us trying to use these to achieve a change in marbling or meat quality in pigs is based on how they work in humans.”
Hausman said the diabetic compound is a glucose-sensitizing agent that makes cells sensitive to insulin for glucose uptake. Researchers felt it might work to increase marbling fat in animal meat, he added.
“We’ve done studies with these drugs in our cell cultures and, you know, they indicated they do work.”
Not all of the pigs in the project experienced the 3.5 percent fat increase. Hausman said a second sampling from a different group of hogs was taken on day after the first test. There was virtually no increase in these hogs.
“We can’t imagine anything could have affected the lipid because lipids are in the muscles or in the tissue (and) are so not likely to change over a very short period of time.”
While the study was not 100 percent consistent, Philip Thacker, a professor with the University of Saskatchewan agriculture college, said the research was a step in the right direction.
“That (pill) would be very useful in our industry. It’s going down the right road in trying to increase the amount of (marbling) fat,” said Thacker.
“I think we need to have the pendulum swing back a little bit.”
He said the trend of reducing fat in animals has also negatively affected the quality of meat in Canada.
“We’ve kind of gone to the point where the producers have responded so well that we’ve actually gone too far,” Thacker said. “Marbling is one way to try and increase the tenderness and (flavour) of meat.”
Hausman said changing the length of time the animals are fed the additive could be a new research avenue but the ARS has no plans to continue the study.
The research did not determine whether the compound would be effective in other livestock, such as beef.
