[Meat quality in swine. 5. Relationships between blood parameters and meat quality]

The responses of haemoglobin, haematocrit, glucose, and lactate to natural strain and their relationships to pork quality were studied in several experiments with 155 animals. Stress associated with blood-taking following snout-loop fixation, evacuation, transport, and stunning led to excessive excitation which, in turn, caused deflection of the above parameters. Their correlations with criteria of pork quality are unimportant. Assessment of individual strainability of the neuromuscular system on the basis of the above stresses and blood parameters, therefore, does not seem to be promising at all. This result has been confirmed by repeated testing of the above criteria between evacuation and bleeding. The animals tested responded quite variably. Their pork qualities were both "normal" and "impaired".