Pork producers should not only optimize production costs but should also focus on the uniformity of the animals at marketing, thereby obtaining a higher carcass value through, bonuses and while avoiding discounts. Thus, it is extremely important to control all factors which may affect homogeneity. Even though there are many studies on the effects of Enzootic Pneumonia (EP) on production costs, there is not much information available on the effect of EP on carcass value at the slaughterhouse. ScoringEnzootic Pneumonia lesions at the slaughterhouse is a tool which enables pork producers to evaluate the effect of this disease both on individual animals and on groups of animals. It has been shown that the M+PAC~R vaccine, (Schering Plough A.H.) achieves the highest comparative reduction of lung lesions (1). The main objective of this study is to relate lung lesion scores with both carcass weight and quality and ultimately with carcass value. This exercise may provide an additional tool to quantify potential income losses based on the lung lesion scores at slaughter.
展开▼
