Stress in the period during transport and around slaughter is known to influence the physiological and biochemical processes in pigs (Adeola and Ball, 1992). Pigs that become non-ambulatory without obvious injury, trauma or disease and refuse to walk,during loading, transport, unloading or while in the lairage are considered fatigued. Literature available on pig transport and slaughter suggest recumbent pigs can result from both acute stress/acidosis or physical exhaustion/glycogen depletion or a combination of the two mechanisms. Fatigued pigs, by industry accounts, tend to be of heavy muscled, high lean genotypes and newer genetic lines may be more susceptible to heat stress (Brown-Brandl etal., 2001).
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