Consumer acceptability of dry-cured hams from uncastrated boars : drying yield, fat quality, and odour-active compounds

This study allowed to make an estimation of the consequences for the pig sector during the processing of dry hams of more than seven months stemming from entire males characterized on their levels of androstenone and skatole with regard to castrated males and females. The dry yield of entire males is lower of 3.3 points with regard to the yield of castrated males and lower of 2.2 points with regard to the females. The results of the tastings organized in a consumer laboratory of sensory analysis do not allow to observe significant differences in the category of risk of tested boar taint (less than 2 μg of androstenone and unless 0.20 μg/g of pure fat for skatole). Regarding the bibliography and the tendency of the results of this study, it’s prudent for the high quality dry hams to control the level of boar taint on the fat of the fresh ham before processing. It seems that we can observe a light reduction of the boar taint compounds during the dry ham process of 7 months. About faty acid composition we not see a lot of differences on the final product between genders. We can observe a tendency to have more faty acid poly-insaturated (AGPI) in entire male dry ham fat by comparison to females and castrated pigs.