URBANA, Ill. (UPI) Pigs that play with toys and are petted afew minutes each week are more likely to produce better meat becausethey will approach the slaughter more willingly, according to aUniversity of Illinois researcher.
Those pigs are likely to be more relaxed and easier to coax intochutes leading to slaughter. Other pigs must be prodded or bulliedinto the chutes and will suffer physical damage, resulting in bruisedor tough meat, Stanley Curtis, a professor of animal science, saidlast week.
If pigs have a chance to explore their environment, "There issome thought that . . . it will have some effect on them that can betranslated into being easier to handle at the time of marketing,"Curtis said.
The researchers hung rubber hoses in the pens of some pigs andallowed others to roam the area outside their pens for a few minuteseach week. Still others were treated to petting and stroking bypeople for about 10 minutes each week, Curtis said.
Some pigs were given two or all three of those treatments. Themost relaxed pigs were the ones allowed to play with toys and treatedto the 10-minute petting sessions, Curtis said. Those were the onesthat did not need much prodding to move through a chute similar tochutes in slaughterhouses.
"Many pigs in pens are excitable and nervous, so handlers at theslaughter houses have to give the animals `hot shots' (with electricprods) to keep them in line," said Temple Grandin, one of thegraduate assistants.
Curtis and his researchers, however, say tests on the actualquality of the meat from slaughtered pigs given the treatments arenot complete.
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