Influência das condições de manejo pré-abate na qualidade da carne suína

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of pre-slaughter handling and transport management on the occurrence of PSE (Pale, Soft and Exudative) meat based on a database of pigs slaughtered in a commercial slaughterhouse located in the region of greater Dourados, MS, Brazil. For that purpose, two evaluation strategies were adopted. The first refers to the application of Integrated Multivariate Analysis in 1,832 carcasses, and the second to the application of Logistic Regression in 854 selected carcasses. For the first study, nine variables were considered which may affect pork quality and, of these, seven are related to pre-slaughter handling. The purpose was to identify which ones of the variables evaluated were the most relevant for the qualitative carcass study. Thus, by means of the Principal Component Analysis, it was seen that the first five components explained 89.28% of total variance. The second study had the purpose of certifying the effect of transportation and environment on the probable risk of occurrence of PSE meat. Therefore, eight variables were considered, adopting pH45 as the dependent variable and the others as explanatory variables: carcass temperature, environment, time of shipment, trip conditions, distance between the farm and the slaughterhouse, average speed during transportation and resting time in the slaughterhouse stalls. Thus, a logistic regression model was prepared in which the dependent variable was constructed by identification of PSE meat in swine carcasses with pH45 values less than or equal to 5.8. The maximum likelihood method for estimation of the parameters and the stepwise technique for selection of explanatory variables were applied to obtain the model with the greatest predictive capability. The model obtained presented predictive ability of 91.8%.