[HappyHippy]

Interesting what you say about female pigs [member=3020]oaklandspigs[/member] We had a pig slaughtered and the meat cured, a female it was. She was incredibly salty the guy said she may have been cycling is this true?

Not one I have heard of.

I've heard of this (just anecdotally) apparently if they're in season when slaughtered they don't take the cure as well as they would normally. I sent an OSB gilt off once and the bacon wasn't as good as previous gilts - this may well have been the cause but we never noticed/made a connection.
I've heard of adrenaline at slaughter causing the meat to taint - obvious to everyone who tastes it, whereas boar taint is only detectable by some (I'm one of those  )

[oaklandspigs]

HH - thanks for that - very interesting!

on cycling - of course the commercial guys never let them get old enough to cycle, so I doubt if any real pig research has been done on female cycling - so your experience may well be the best evidence there is.

On adrenaline and taint - yes this can be taint - actually caused by low lactic acid as a result of stress.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) says

'It is necessary for animals to be stress and injury free during operations prior to slaughter, so as not to unnecessarily deplete muscle glycogen reserves. It is also important for animals to be well rested during the 24-hour period before slaughter. This is in order to allow for muscle glycogen to be replaced by the body as much as possible (the exception being pigs, which should travel and be slaughtered as stress free as possible but not rested for a prolonged period prior to slaughter). It is important that the glycogen levels in the muscles of the slaughtered carcass are as high as possible, to develop the maximum level of lactic acid in the meat.
Lactic acid in the muscle has the effect of retarding the growth of bacteria that have contaminated the carcass during slaughter and dressing. These bacteria cause spoilage of the meat during storage, particularly in warmer environments, and the meat develops off-smells, colour changes, rancidity and slime.'

whether you call this 'off-smell' taint is up to how you want to define the word.

but Dr John McGlone , who is a professor of Animal Science at Texas Tech University says

"stress at slaughter can cause meat lighten or darken in color, and can reduce water holding capacity which makes it dry when you eat it, but none of those examples could cause any result that would be confused with boar taint"

So I think 'stress taint' exists but is different from 'boar taint'