Meat quality of “Galician Mountain” foals breed. Effect of sex, slaughter age and livestock production system

The effect of livestock production system and concentrate level on carcass traits and meat quality of foals slaughtered at 18 months of age

“…The pH, chemical composition color and heme-iron content were measured according to Franco et al (2011) at 24 h post-mortem. Water holding capacity was measured in two ways: cooking loss (CL) and drip loss (DL) as described in Franco et al (2011).…”

“…Water holding capacity was measured in two ways: cooking loss (CL) and drip loss (DL) as described in Franco et al (2011). Textural profile analysis (TPA) test was Meat quality as affected by livestock production system measured by compressing to 80% with a compression probe of 19.85 cm 2 of surface contact at a compression speed of 1 mm/s in a texture Analyzer (TA.XT.plus of Stable Micro Systems, Vienna Court, Churwell, UK).…”

“…Between the first and second compression, the probe waited for 2 s. Hardness, cohesiveness, springiness, gumminess and chewiness were obtained. The Warner Braztler test was performed following the procedure described in Franco et al (2011).…”

“…Horsemeat consumption has increased in recent years, with Spain being the fourth major producer of horsemeat in the UE in 2011 with 6500 tons (FAOSTAT, 2011), but still not comparable to the consumption of other types of meats such as beef, chicken or pork, which are more important in the human diet (Franco et al, 2011). These increases might be due to changes in attitude toward this type of meat and the interest of the consumers to taste new meat products .…”

“…crossing with heavier breeds, increasing slaughter age and including a finishing period with concentrate, which could make exportation easy (Franco et al, 2013). It has been established that the quality of horsemeat can be influenced by several factors such as breed (Juárez et al, 2009;Lanza et al, 2009;Franco et al, 2013), livestock production system (Franco et al, 2011 and, finishing feeding Franco et al, 2013;Franco and Lorenzo, 2014), muscle types (Tateo et al, 2008;Lorenzo and Pateiro, 2013;Lorenzo et al, 2013a) or age/live weight (LW) Franco et al, 2011), among others.…”