As quality of life of Korean consumers continues to improve, they have shown a trend of preference for food with excellent taste and quality rather than the quantity of the food itself. Recently, the Korean consumer market started to explore food items that not only have excellent taste and quality but are also healthful for the body. Such change in consumption pattern is likely to have an effect on the direction of Hanwoo improvement.
ith consumers’ increased interest in health, concerns over fat have also grown. This study was conducted to find whether such change of consumer awareness has an effect on the current direction of improvement focused on the improvement of the marbling score.
sing the butchery data of castrated 240,182 Hanwoo cows with descended testicles, this study analyzed the contribution of carcass traits influencing auction prices in Hanwoo as well as the effect of environmental elements that have an effect on carcass traits.
For effect verification, six traits?mainly, backfat thickness, eye muscle area, carcass weight, marbling score, auction price, and total price?were used, and the effects that were analyzed from birth year, birth season, and slaughter age showed a highly meaningful difference (p<0.01).
The result of annual multiple regression analyses from 2008 to 2011 according to each carcass trait showed that the contribution of backfat thickness was 4.31, 4.40, 5.15, 4.63, 3.90, and 6.54, and the contribution of eye muscle area was 0.62, 0.93, 0.43, 0.22, 1.34, and 1.71. The contribution of carcass weight was 40.83, 47.84, 31.55, 33.14, 40.89, and 36.24, and the contribution of marbling score was 54.23, 46.83, 62.87, 62.01, 53.86, and 55.51. As a result of the comparison made by adding the data except for the holiday season to the analysis, the contribution generally showed a similar trend as the overall period even though with some price difference. Backfat thickness and eye muscle area showed low contribution at first; however, these two traits started to show a generally increasing trend with the lapse of the year while marbling score showed a decreasing trend since 2010.