8 BULLETIN 1086, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
In the pumping record in Table 1, it is shown that the increase 
in weight varies with the different wholesale cuts and the different 
grades of meat. Comparing the oily and firm meat, it is seen that 
the firm, dry salt bellies gained 2.86 per cent, and the firm pickle- 
cured picnics 5.23 per cent, while the oily dry-salt bellies gained 3.59 
per cent and the oily pickle-cured picnics 6.78 per cent. 
The pickle-cured bacon bellies were the only wholesale cuts that 
were not pumped. With the exception of the oily lots, however. 
the gain in cure was much more than in the case of any of the other 
cuts. The gain in cure was as follows: Oily. 4.43 per cent; soft, 
7.92 per cent; firm, 9.62 per cent. In other words, the firm meat 
gained 5.19 per cent and -the soft 3.49 per cent more than the oily. 
The gain in other cuts was much more uniform, and it should be 
noted that the great gain in the firm bacon bellies was counter- 
balanced by correspondingly heavy shrinkage in the smoke and during 
the retaining period. 
LOSS IN SMOKE. 
All cuts, regardless of how they were cured, lost weight while 
being smoked. This loss varied with the different cuts and grades 
of meat, but with every wholesale cut, except the picnics, the firm 
meat lost more weight than the oily lots. The soft meat in every 
case lost more than the firm. 
The bacon bellies shrunk almost twice as much as the skinned 
hams. The shrinkage for all three grades of bacon bellies and skinned 
hams was as follows: 
i Oily. 
Soft. Firm. 
Bellies 
I 
Per cent. 
13. 19 
Percent. Percent. 
15.22 14.41 
7. 49 
7. 85 7. 84 
When both gain and loss are considered, however, from the chilled 
weight through the smoke, the total loss for all of the cuts of the three 
grades was: Oily, 5.04 per cent; soft, 5.95 per cent; firm, 4.61 per 
cent. This indicates that if the meat were sold to the consumer 
immediately after being smoked the percentage loss of the firm 
product would have exceeded that of the oily by 0.43 and that of the 
soft by 1.34 per cent of the original weight. The large consuming 
centers, however, are too far from the packing plants to make this 
possible. Days, weeks, and sometimes many months elapse before 
meat is transferred from the packing plants to the consumer. 
During the 19 to 21 days retaining period used in these tests 
(which was approximately the time required to handle the bulk of 
the meat) the firm and soft lots were found to shrink more than the 
