The Impact of Grouping on Skin Lesions and Meat Quality of Pig Carcasses

摘要

In practice, unfamiliar pigs are frequently mixed prior to loading in order to obtain groups of uniform weight and to adjust the group size to the dimensions of the trailer compartments. Regrouping pigs is associated with establishing a new social rank via aggressive interactions. Fighting results in skin lesions and pre-slaughter stress, which leads to reduced meat quality. In this study, four grouping strategies, namely, non-regrouping and regrouping at fattening (regrouped at 80 kg and kept till slaughter), loading and lairage, were compared by determining skin lesions and meat quality at slaughter. The non-regrouped pigs showed, at slaughter, fewer skin lesions and better meat quality than the pigs regrouped at loading or in lairage. Pigs mixed at 80 kg at the farm have, in general, a comparable amount of skin lesions and comparable meat quality as the non-mixed group. If mixing is unavoidable, due to large within-group weight variations, mixing at 80 kg can be an alternative to reduce skin lesions at slaughter and to optimise meat quality. However, mixing at 80 kg is still associated with aggressive interactions after regrouping and with weight variations at slaughter.