The new European lean meat content and the determination of carcass composition

The EC definition of classification criterion has changed following the European project EUPIGCLASS. The lean meat content is now defined as the lean meat percentage in the four main cuts and in France is called “TMP”. It was introduced on December 2006 in the French slaughterhouses. Nevertheless, it is still predicted from the same fat depths (G1 and G2) and muscle depth (M2) measured by CGM. The new equation is now common to females and males as sex effect has been considered negligible.On average the lean meat content has decreased of about 1,6 % lean, a bit more for the castrates, reducing therefore the average difference between both sexes. The author recommends to use the term “TMPcgm” for the TMP estimate by the approved CGM method and in the other cases to explicitly specify the estimation method. Indeed, as the prediction error is particularly high, any conclusions’ extrapolation to the carcass composition in general might be dangerous, especially for small samples. An alternative is to use any more accurate estimation method suited for the studied issue, combined with statistical procedures for reducing costs.At medium term the lean meat content should be replaced by a lean content measured by Computed Tomography and an automatic device could follow CGM.