There has been recent interest in all the red meat species in a group of compounds known as β-agonists which reduce the proportion of fat in the carcass when added to the diet. In this work the effects of the novel Glaxo compound GAH/034 are reported.

Sixty crossbred (Large White x Landrace) gilts from 16 litters were used. From 25 to 80 kg live weight, 2 groups of 10 were fed a control diet (C) containing 13 MJDE and 190g crude protein/kg. Four treatment (T) groups of 10 were fed the same diet containing 4 ppm GAH/034. All groups were fed on the same time-based feeding scale which allowed 1.2 kg/pig/d at 25 kg Increasing by 0.2 kg/d each week to an upper limit of 3.0 kg/day. All pigs were fed the control diet for four days before slaughter at the IFR abattoir at 80 kg live weight after which a range of carcass and meat quality tests were applied. Half the pigs were fully dissected into lean, bone, skin, subcutaneous fat and intermuscular fat.