Due to the strong public initiative in Europe and increased regulator focus to mitigate pain, surgical castration of pigs is being gradually abandoned, while the importance of other sex categories like entire males (EM) and immunocastrates (IC) increases. Although beneficial for animal welfare and economics, their use also brings forward several quality problems. Besides the occurrence of boar taint in EM, these include excessive carcass leanness, softer fat, meat color and pH deviations, inferior water holding capacity and increased meat toughness. In this paper, the raw material differences between the male sex categories and their influence on product quality are reviewed, and possible solutions are presented. Using EM for dried or thermally processed products may result in lower processing yields and inferior sensory quality, which may partially be prevented by applying specific processing adaptations. Immunocastration is a viable solution, especially when prolonging the vaccination to slaughter interval. Low to medium levels of boar taint can be effectively managed in most of the meat products, applying procedures like cooking, microbial inoculation or masking (by spices and especially smoking), while highly tainted material can be valorized only by combining various methods and/or with dilution of the tainted meat.

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The effectiveness of using essential oils against fish parasites and pathogenic bacteria as environmentally friendly phytotherapeutic agents in the aquaculture industry is demonstrated. A commercial additive composed of garlic essential oil, thymol and carvacrol (AROTEC‐G®) was added to a diet for gilthead seabream (Sparus aurata) as a protection strategy against Sparicotyle chrysophrii. The intense aromatic properties of these essential oils might lead to the need of a suppression time to reverse possible changes in the organoleptic quality of the fish. Two experimental groups were set up: an experimental group fed a commercial feed supplemented with AROTEC‐G® (diet A) during the first 4 weeks of the nutritional assay, and after which the treatment was suspended for 14, 21 and 28 days after a first sampling performed (day 0); and a control group, fed the same basal diet without AROTEC‐G® supplementation (diet C). A physicochemical evaluation measured the pH, colour and texture, and a descriptive quantitative sensory analysis (QDA) was carried out using a trained panel for gilthead seabream fillets. Overall, the findings showed that the use of dietary essential oils did not result in significant sensory differences after day 0 of the study, although slight differences were observed in some of the physicochemical parameters analysed.

Based on the need to find alternatives for the use of meat from non-castrated male pigs that contains high levels of androstenone and skatole, the production of meat products (raw and Frankfurt sausages) with reduced fat content was proposed, as these compounds are lipophilic. For this purpose, three batches of each product (total six) were produced. These included a control batch (1); normal fat content and two fat-reduced batches, where (2) fat was replaced with inulin and β-glucan, or (3) fat was replaced with inulin and β-glucan in addition to a skin grape by-product. These groups used meat from non-castrated male pigs that contained 6.25 µg/g androstenone and 0.4451 µg/g skatole. In general, fat-reduced sausages exhibited less brightness than did the controls. The texture results in Frankfurt were similar to those of the control, while Spanish sausage supplemented with grape skin exhibited reduced hardness. Both strategies resulted in a reduction in boar taint, and this reduction was up to 87.3% in raw sausages with grape by-products. Fat reduction could provide an interesting strategy to allow for the use of tainted meat from non-castrated male pigs.