In contrast with many other authors (see before), no signifficant positive eect of vit. E supplementation was observed on colour stability of longissimus thoracis muscle. This may be due to the fact that vit. E levels for
the CON group were relatively high. Faustman, Chan, Schaefer and Havens (1998) recently reported that the absence of an eect of vit. E supplementation on colour stability, may be caused by access to pasture immediately prior to the experiment. In our experiment animals were kept in con®nement since 4 months of age. Feed
analysis for vit. E revealed that the levels in the concentrate were 720 and 35 mg per kg (means of duplicate
samples) concentrate for the SUP and CON group, respectively. The silage which both groups received
throughout the fattening period contained 15 mg/kg. Considering the feed consumption per day (see Material
and Methods section), the daily vit. E uptake from the silage was for both groups 225 mg and from the con-
centrate 105 and 2160 mg for the CON and SUP groups, respectively. The total daily uptake of 330 mg
vit. E by the CON group was much higher than the vit.E uptake figures reported for the control group by
Arnold et al. (1992) and Liu et al. (1996a).