Influence of rearing system, diet and gender on performance, carcass traits and meat quality of Polish Landrace pigs

Abstract

Forty-eight Polish Landrace pigs (initially 32.43 6 0.70 kg live weight) were assigned to a 2 3 2 3 2 factorial arrangement in order to assess the effects of the rearing system (outdoor v. indoor), diet (with corn grain silage v. without corn grain silage) and gender (barrows v. gilts) on performance, carcass traits, meat quality and intramuscular collagen (IMC) characteristics. During the trial period of 14 weeks, each group was housed in a pen of 12 m 2 , and the outdoor-reared animals had access to a paddock of 24 m 2 . Pigs were fed a diet computed according to standard requirements and supplied on a basis of 9% of metabolic weight (live weight 0.75 ). Pigs were slaughtered at 110.69 6 0.85 kg. The rearing system did not significantly affect growth, hot and cold dressing, meat quality of m. longissimus lumborum or IMC. Outdoor pigs had less (P , 0.05) backfat thickness, slightly higher (P 5 0.082) lean percent and a meat with lower pH and fat than the conventional system. In light of these results, alternative pig rearing systems with indoor space and free outdoor access could be an interesting production system for the pigs. Compared with the pigs fed diets with corn grain silage, those fed diets without corn had higher (P , 0.05) lean, ham percentage and IMC content, lower (P , 0.05) neck percentage but similar main tissue components of the ham and meat quality. Compared with the gilts, barrows were fatter and showed a meat with different physico-chemical traits, which was slightly more tender and had similar IMC properties.

Growth, Carcass and Meat Quality of Casertana, Italian Large White and Duroc x (Landrace x Italian Large White) Pigs Reared Outdoors

“…Intensive outdoor pig production systems have been put into practice (pigs housed in an open building with outside access) in recent years in some parts of the world (Pietrolà et al, 2006;Bonneau and Lebret, 2010;Maiorano et al, 2013). Interest in intensive outdoor pig production is also growing in Italy (Maiorano et al, 2007;Pietrolà et al, 2006).…”

Effect of transport, rest period and temperature on pork quality from different countries

“…Pre-slaughter stress has a negative impact on animal welfare and meat quality (D'Eath, et al, 2010). The quality of pork is the result of a production system, as the combination of genetic, rearing condition (Hluchý and Eliáš 2006;Hluchý, et al, 2007), age and weight at slaughter, handling, stress (Majorano, et al, 2012), health (Rolinec, et al,2010), as well as cooking method (Sinha, et al, 2009). Transportation conditions such as noise, loading and unloading, fighting due to the mixing of unfamiliar pigs and stocking too many animals in a truck mean severe stress for the animal resulting in an accelerated post-mortem glycolysis and impaired meat quality (Smulders and van Laack, 1991).…”

Improvement of pork characteristics under commercial conditions with small amount of straw or hay

“…Gender in our study significantly influenced the majority of studied carcass characteristics, with barrows having heavier carcass weights and greater levels of backfat thickness. These results are expected, since it is well known that barrows grow faster than gilts (Bee et al 2004;Elkmann and Hoy 2008) and have thicker backfat with similar muscle thickness, which results in lower lean meat content (Bee et al 2004;Lebret et al 2011;Maiorano et al 2013).…”