Proceedings International Congress of Meat Science and Technology

Donkey meat has been produced in the past slaughtering animals at the end of their working activities; consequently, meat was considered not tender and sometimes, in order to facilitate human consumption, it was most convenient producing salami or other kind of ripened products rather than selling fresh donkey meat [1]. The dramatic decrease of donkey population in Italy and in many other western countries, started at the end of the second world war, and has recently been stopped because of the interest in the nutritional characteristics of donkey milk, used for feeding children affected by cow milk protein allergy [2]. Not all female donkeys reared on farms can be used for breeding; both young female and male donkey foals can be used for meat production, considering the good nutritional properties recently determined in this food [3]. In the south of Italy, particularly in Apulia region, consumption of both horse and donkey meat is traditional [4]. The aim of this study was to investigate on the effects of sex and slaughter age on fatty acid composition of muscle Longissimus Thoracis taken from 8 female and 9 male crossbred donkey foals slaughtered at two different age, 8 and 13 months, in order to deepen the knowledge about donkey meat nutritional properties.