Abstract:
The immediate refrigeration of meat after slaughter is a key issue for the proper storage and
aging of meat. The industry standard cold chain relies on low temperatures and ventilation to lower
the internal carcass temperature to 0–4 ◦C within the first 48 h, i.e., within four times the so-called
semi-cooling time. On the other hand, for games, once bled and eviscerated, the carcass must be sent
to a point where it can be sectioned or kept on air for maturation at refrigeration temperature. The
precautions to observe are few and simple but essential: protect the meat and start the cooling process
quickly. After preparing the animal (bleeding and evisceration), it may be necessary to face a period
of transport that is sometimes long and not very easy; while small animals can be easily transported
in a backpack, larger ones must necessarily be carried by several people or sometimes dragged to the
vehicle capable of transporting them. It is obvious that a wild boar opened from the jaws to the pelvis
and dragged for hundreds of meters will tend to be contaminated, although these contaminations
are to be considered secondary for the preservation of the meat, compared to contamination by
the intestinal contents. In an attempt to investigate the effect of delayed refrigeration on wild boar
carcass contamination, the aim of this work was to determine a correlation between several hunting
and logistic parameters (age, sex, animal weight, shooting distance, number of shots, weather and temperature and time from shot to refrigeration and to analysis) and bacterial contamination of
the carcass. The correlation coefficient, r, was found to be 0.038 for the eviscerated body weight
(p < 0.05), 0.091 for the external temperature on the day of hunting (p < 0.05), 0.027 for the time from
shot to refrigeration (p = 0.081), 0.038 for the time from refrigeration to analysis (p < 0.05) and 0.043
for the time from shot to analysis (p < 0.05). These results stand for a negative correlation between
the bacterial population and eviscerated carcass weight and between the bacterial population and
external temperature and for a positive correlation between the time from shot to analysis and from
refrigeration to analysis. No association was demonstrated between the bacterial population and the
time from shot to refrigeration.
