Avaliação qualitativa de lesões em carcaças bovinas em frigoríficos de Santarém – PA.

Abstract

Pre-slaughter management is one of the fundamental points of the beef production chain, inadequate management causes significant quantitative losses. In this sense, a descriptive research with a quantitative approach was carried out, which aimed to evaluate the occurrence of bruises and loss due to injuries in bovine carcasses of slaughtered animals subjected to the influence of transport, carried out at four different distances. The study was carried out in a slaughterhouse in the city of Santarém-PA. The location, age of the lesions, intensity in the bovine carcasses were visually evaluated, data regarding the type and state of the trucks that the animals were transported and sex class were also analyzed. A total of 3,003 carcasses were evaluated, of this total, 2121 were males and 882 were females, with 62.90% of the animals coming from the Lower Amazon mesoregion and 37.10% from the western region of Pará. Of the total number of carcasses evaluated, 2,409 (80%) presented lesions of varying degrees, with an incidence of 8,026 bruises, with an average of 2.67 lesions per animal. Transport distances up to 200 km showed higher incidence of recent and grade 1 injuries at distances up to 200 km. Higher frequencies of superficial injuries classified as grade 1 (n=6706) were observed, with a predominance in the hind quarter (86.29), a region with a high concentration of prime cuts such as rump, lizard and sirloin, which had a higher frequency of bruises. Most injuries were classified as recent (98.10%). Male cattle (n=2121) were the group with the highest incidence of lesions in bovine carcasses, sampling of discarded tissues was performed, it was estimated that during the period comprised of the study a total of 6,581,032 kg was discarded, totaling R$ 252,599, 81. It was observed that 94.74% of the animals that arrived at the slaughterhouse-refrigerator were transported by Truck-type trucks, with a higher frequency of regular floors. The results obtained show that transport and pre-slaughter handling are deficient and need to be adapted.