How to Improve Meat Quality and Welfare in Entire Male Pigs by Genetics

Abstract

Giving up surgical castration is desirable to avoid pain during surgery but breeding entire males raises issues on meat quality, particularly on boar taint, and aggression. It has been known for decades that boar taint is directly related to sexual development in uncastrated male pigs. The proportion of tainted carcasses depends on many factors, including genetics. The selection of lines with a low risk of developing boar taint should be considered as the most desirable solution in the medium to long term. It has been evidenced that selection against boar taint is feasible, and has been set up in a balanced way in some pig populations to counterbalance potential unfavorable effects on reproductive performances. Selection against aggressive behaviors, though theoretically feasible, faces phenotyping challenges that compromise selection in practice. In the near future, new developments in modelization, automatic recording, and genomic data will help define breeding objectives to solve entire male meat quality and welfare issues.

Keywords: behavior; boar taint; entire males; genetics; selection.

Figure 1

Levels of androstenone and skatole in different breeds and crossbred populations [5,7,10,14,15]. Shape for the lines: square = paternal line, diamond = maternal line, circle = crossbred; color for the breed: beige = Pietrain, red = Landrace, blue = Yorkshire or Large white; purple = Duroc; for crossbred, the color of the paternal line.