Centre pork chop colour classification using image analysis on the ventral surface of the loin

Image analysis of ventral, anterior, and posterior ends of 550 pork loins was used to classify extreme-coloured centre chops. Only the ventral side was strongly correlated ( r = 0.79) to the centre chop. Thresholds at 2.5th, 5th, and 7.5th percentiles of ventral surface pale pork were selected to classify centre chop pale pork (5th percentile). Increasing stringency increased accuracy in excluding pale samples. At the 7.5th percentile, prediction accuracy of pale (85.7%) and non-pale samples (89.5%) was balanced. This method can be adopted by commercial pork processors as a classification or pre-sorting approach.