Comparative evaluation of the quality and fatty acid profile of meat from brown hares and domestic rabbits offered the same diet

Contributions on the Sensorial, Physico-chemical and Nutritional Characterization of Hare Meat (Lepus europaeus pallas)

“…Due to the growing demand for high-quality meat products, the challenges of the meat industry are to meet consumer expectations of delivering safe, high-quality meat [1,2]. Modern consumers expect to have access to soft and tender meat, with good taste, high nutritional value (rich in proteins, minerals, unsaturated fatty acids and vitamins), inducing positive influences on human health [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18], safe for consumption, without pesticides, antibiotics and drug residues [19,20].…”

“…The attention of farmers and meat producers has been focused on small mammals, such as domestic rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus), which provide high quality meat . Another leporid species, the brown hare (Lepus europaeus Pallas), has also been generating interest from meat producers [2,19,51]. The meat of these animals differs from that of poultry and other farmyard animals [52], but the consumption of their meat is not so popular as other [19,52].…”

“…The brown hare (Lepus europaeus Pallas) is one of the most popular small game species [20] being sometime reared for the restocking of hunting and protected areas in Europe [2,20,51]. Some authors have investigated the * email: dsimeanu@uaiasi.ro; cicipop@uaiasi.ro potential of adding hare meat from hunting into the human diet because of its favorable sensory characteristics, high unsaturated fatty acids [57], proteins, minerals, vitamins content and low-fat content [58,60,61] and its energetic value which is similar to other meats [51].…”

“…Hare meat is classified as red meat, mainly in terms of its high iron (Fe) content [61], but its availability is usually restricted by hunting seasons [52,57,60]. To produce high-quality meat, it is necessary to understand the characteristics of meat quality traits and the factors that control them but in wild animals is quite difficult to establish the influence of diet on meat characteristics [2,52]. Hares, like wild rabbits, are herbivorous that consume a wide variety of plants and grains that qualitatively and nutritionally differ by season, which may cause large variation in the composition of the meat [59].…”

“…There are very few data available in the literature regarding the characterization of hare meat. From our knowledge only three articles approached the quality of hare meat issued from hunting, in Austria [57], in Croatia [60], and in Slovakia [58]; another three recent studies depict the quality of hare meat collected from farmed brown hare in Italy [20,51], and Poland [2]. The lack of data on the characterization of hare meat led us to carry on this study, whose goals were to assess the sensorial, physico-chemical and nutritional traits of hare meat (Lepus europaeus Pallas) collected from hunting funds in North-East of Romania.…”