Comparing Visual-Only and Visual-Palpation Post-Mortem Lung Scoring Systems in Slaughtering Pigs

Respiratory diseases continue to pose significant challenges in pig production, and the assessment of lung lesions at abattoir can provide valuable data for epidemiological investigations disease surveillance. The evaluation slaughter is a relatively simple, fast, straightforward process but variations arising from different abattoirs, observers, scoring methods introduce uncertainty; moreover, presence multiple systems complicates comparisons studies, currently, there are limited studies that compare these among each other. objective this study was validated, simplified, standardized schemes assessing surface-related slaughtered pigs analyze their reliability under field conditions. This conducted high-throughput Italy, where two (Madec Blaha) were benchmarked using 637 plucks. Statistical analysis revealed good agreement between when severe or medium observed; however, ability accurately identify healthy lungs minor injuries diverged significantly. These findings demonstrate Blaha method more suitable routine surveillance swine respiratory diseases, whereas Madec give detailed reliable results welfare status animals farm level.