It can the emotional state of the pig affect the quality of his meat?

The project 'Scoreboards and animal emotion' or ANEMOMA (by his acronyms in English) has by aim study the relation between the welfare of the pig, so much in farm as in slaughterhouse, and the quality of his meat, considering the behaviour and the biomarcadores physiological of the animal and the biomarcadores of the meat. “In a previous investigation discover that the emotional state of the pig can modify biochemical and cellular parameters of his organism, that to his time can be used like scoreboards of the stress” signals the  doctor Antonio Velarde of the IRTA and manager of the project ANEMOMA. “The current project –explains the doctor Velarde– pretends to go further and evaluate the effect of the sex, genotype, conditions of handle in the cognitive bias and identify biomarcadores of stress before and during the sacrifice (phases in front of and peri-mortem, respectively), in the blood, saliva, brain, intestine and meat of pig”.

In addition to the IRTA, the project ANEMOMA has the participation of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the Regional Service of Investigation and Development Agroalimentario of Asturias (SERIDA) and the University of Oviedo, being funded by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

The animal welfare is a concept that includes so much the physical health like mental of the animal, and although they exist indicators on the confort, the hunger, the health or the injuries that can suffer an animal, still lacking for developing measures on the emotional state of the animals of farm.