A total of 31 hog carcasses from across Manitoba and into Saskatchewan were entered in the 2007 Hog Carcass Competition held in conjunction with Manitoba Hog Days in Brandon.

The carcass competition was re-introduced to the show in 2005 and has quickly become one of the highlights of the event.

Competition judge Dr. Bob McKay of McKay Genstat Consultants says a variety of criteria are used to determine the top quality carcasses.

Dr. Bob McKay-McKay Genstat Consultants

In the show the measures that we have are Minolta loin eye colour.

We actually have a Minolta colour meter that actually measures the light intensity of the muscle.

We do a tactile measure of texture which we actually feel the muscle and see if it's dry and tight or loose and wet, marbling which is a visual assessment of the loin eye to see how much marbling fat is in there and we also use the Minolta again on the loin fat to see if it's a nice crisp white.

Now those aren't the exhaustive measurements of quality.

If we wanted to push a little bit farther, we had a little bit more time in the show, we could do 24 hour pH which measures the acidity of the muscle and would indicate a high incidence of Pale, Soft, Exudative pork which is really bad and the ultimate test is we take a chop from each carcass, take off the fat and the bone, weight it and put it on a tray and put it in a fridge at two degrees and measure how much moisture is lost over a 48 hour period but we haven't got time to do that so we just restrict ourselves to a smaller set of parameters.

This year's Grand Champion Trophy was awarded to Treesbank Colony of Wawaneesa.

Treesbank also exhibited this year's third place carcass.

The top five were rounded out by Boundary Lane Colony of Elkhorn with the second place carcass, fourth place went to Hidden Valley Colony of Austin and the fifth place carcass was entered by Spring Valley Colony of Brandon.