Abstract: In conventional chilling, carcass shrinkage was so serious that caused considerable economic losses. To solve this problem, spray-chill system was introduced during the cooling period. In this study, effects of different spray-chilling durations (4, 8, 12 and 16h) were compared with conventional chilling on carcass shrinkage and pork quality during chilling. It indicated that spray-chilling significantly reduced carcass shrinkage at 24 h postmortem, slightly increased bacterial counts, but had little effect on retail life of M.Longissimus. Regarding WHC (water-holding capacity) of muscle,drip loss was higher with the prolonging of spray-chill treatment time, while colour of carcass showed only a little change except for a slight increase on the value of CIE L* of fat. Fat color tended to brighten and turned gray as spray duration extended up to 12 h. The rate of chilling was similar for all treatments (p>0.05), while pH of carcasses by 16 h treatment turned lower than others at the end of chilling.

Key words: spray-chilling, pig carcass, shrinkage, pork quality