Two different technologies were tested on the slaughterline for their ability to predict drip loss at 24 h, namely near infrared reflectance (NIR) and impedance measurements using a tetra polar measuring geometry at a frequency of 1000 Hz. The results demonstrate that NIR measurements (900-1800 nm) acquired during a 6 min period starting only 30 min post exsanguination through a fibre optic probe in combination with multivariate data analysis can be used for predicting drip loss 24 h after slaughter. A correlation higher than 0.8 was observed for a trial on 99 carcasses measured at a commercial slaughterhouse. The tetrapolar impedance measurements did not perform as well as NIR yielding a correlation of 0.5 with 24 h drip loss.