Fat Replacement by Vegetal Fibres to Improve the Quality of Sausages Elaborated with Non-Castrated Male Pork

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Traditionally, male pigs were castrated without anaesthesia or pain relief before they reached 7 days of age to avoid the production of an undesirable odour and flavour in their meat, termed “boar taint.” In recent years, to improve animal welfare according to European recommendations, farmers have generally abandoned this practice, increasing the supply of non-castrated male pork in the market. Based on this, alternatives are required to improve the quality of meat and meat products derived from these animals, as these products also possess different texture characteristics that make the meat harder and less juicy due to the presence of less fat. Recently, health has become more important to consumers, and reducing the fat content in non-castrated male pig products by replacing it with vegetable fibre has been shown to represent a good strategy for masking and improving texture. ABSTRACT: Based on the need to find alternatives for the use of meat from non-castrated male pigs that contains high levels of androstenone and skatole, the production of meat products (raw and Frankfurt sausages) with reduced fat content was proposed, as these compounds are lipophilic. For this purpose, three batches of each product (total six) were produced. These included a control batch (1); normal fat content and two fat-reduced batches, where (2) fat was replaced with inulin and β-glucan, or (3) fat was replaced with inulin and β-glucan in addition to a skin grape by-product. These groups used meat from non-castrated male pigs that contained 6.25 µg/g androstenone and 0.4451 µg/g skatole. In general, fat-reduced sausages exhibited less brightness than did the controls. The texture results in Frankfurt were similar to those of the control, while Spanish sausage supplemented with grape skin exhibited reduced hardness. Both strategies resulted in a reduction in boar taint, and this reduction was up to 87.3% in raw sausages with grape by-products. Fat reduction could provide an interesting strategy to allow for the use of tainted meat from non-castrated male pigs.