Ractopamine - Mode of Action

Mode of Action

When used as a food additive, ractopamine added to feed can be distributed via the blood to the muscle tissues, where it will bind to specific beta receptors in the muscle cell membranes. A cascade of events will then be initiated to increase protein synthesis, which results in increase in muscle fiber size. Ractopamine is known to increase the rate of weight gain, improve feed efficiency and increase carcass leanness in finishing swine. Its use in finishing swine yields about three kilograms of additional lean pork and improves feed efficiency by 10%. In steers and heifers, ractopamine use increases hot carcass weight by about 5.5 kilograms and 5 kilograms, respectively.

Read more about this topic:  Ractopamine

Famous quotes containing the words mode of, mode and/or action:

    The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme,—a principle which should never be followed but with circumspection,—to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation,... and for these oversights successive generations have to pay.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Yours of the 24th, asking “the best mode of obtaining a thorough knowledge of the law” is received. The mode is very simple, though laborious, and tedious. It is only to get the books, and read, and study them carefully.... Work, work, work, is the main thing.
    Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)

    The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimony to her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of the illusion which men thought they thought their existence.
    Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)