Can animal welfare assessment at the farm be a good tool to control pork quality variation?

Abstract Text: The objective of this study was to assess the relationship between criteria of the Welfare Quality^® protocol on farm (WQ) and their relationship with pork quality variation. A total of 1,731 animals were assessed according to the 12 criteria of the WQ protocol based on four principles: good feeding, housing (GH), health (HC) and appropriate behavior in twelve finishing farms, five Welfare Certified (WCE; n = 698) and seven conventional (CON; n = 1,033) farms. A sub-sample of 1,440 pigs (60 pigs/farm) was randomly chosen out of 24 loads (2 loads/farm) at the abattoir. Meat quality was assessed using the Longissimus thoracis (LT) muscle at 24 h post-mortem by measuring pH (pHu), color and drip loss. Data for each variable, within the 12 criteria assessed, were analysed by MIXED and WILCOXON procedure of SAS. Spearman correlations were performed to determine the relationship between on-farm animal welfare scores and meat quality traits. WCE farms showed greater scores for GH and HC, indicating better animal welfare conditions, compared to CON farms (67.9 vs. 39.4; P = 0.001 and 62.9 vs. 50.6; P = 0.006, respectively). The greater scores for WCE farms are explained by a trend for greater space allowance (1.09 vs. 0.74 m²; P = 0.08) and a lower presence of bursitis (25.0 vs. 38.6 %; P = 0.07) and percentage of pneumonia occurrence (2.8 vs. 16.5 %; P=0.09). The LT muscle of WCE pigs tended to present a slightly lower pHu (5.64 vs. 5.67; P = 0.07) and a greater drip loss (4.54 vs. 3.41 % ; P = 0.003) compared to loins from CON pigs. Only GH was correlated with meat quality variation. The greater pHu and lower drip loss in the LT muscle of CON pigs may be mostly explained by the poor housing (GH) conditions of these farms (r = - 0.75; P = 0.01), especially in terms of low space allowance (r = - 0.86; P < 0.001). GH was also related to drip loss variation (r = 0.71; P=0.004), with highest correlations being found between this meat quality trait and GH criteria such as the body weight (r = 0.71; P < 0.001) and the incidence of bursitis (r = 0.67; P=0.01). These results demonstrate that the implementation of the WQ criteria to assess on-farm animal welfare may help control the variation of important pork meat quality traits.

Keywords: Pork, Welfare