Meat Quality Characteristics of Pigs from Animal Welfare Certified Farm

초록

The experiment was undertaken to measure the potential impact of animal welfare on the pork quality under two different farming systems: C1 and C2, two conventional farms; W, an animal welfare farm. Ten pigs (Landrace × Yorkshire × Duroc) of live weight 110 kg were randomly selected from each treatment, and slaughtered under uniform conditions. The left loins were collected, and subsequently analyzed for proximate composition, meat quality traits, fatty acids, free amino acids, and antioxidative dipeptides. Pork from the welfare farm (W) had greater back-fat depth and fat content, but the values were not significantly different from C1 or C2. The W loins had significantly lower moisture contents and pH values compared to C1 or C2. The C2 loins showed highest contents of unsaturated fatty acids, whereas C1 had higher polyunsaturated fatty acids as compared to W. The treatments did not show any significant differences in the contents of free aspartic acid. Anserine (an antioxidant dipeptide) from the W loins was significantly lower than that from the conventional farms. The results indicate that pork quality characteristics from animal welfare-farmed pigs were not different from those of conventional farms. Therefore, it would be appropriate to evaluate the industrial value of animal welfare livestock only at the stage of pig production, rather than the meat quality of pork.

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