Bushifying away the Boar Taint
posted by Anne Overmark For the past two months or so I have had the pleasure of playing around with some pork of shady character, a Weber hot smoking grill and some (hopefully) potent microorganisms. My intention with all this? To make a delicious product out of an ingredient many consider repulsively flawed – boar-tainted meat. It began with the prospect of a voluntary ban on castration of male piglets within the European Union in the year 2018. Castration is a practice primarily performed to prevent boar taint, the unpleasant odour and flavour that may occur in meat from uncastrated males (Lunde et al. 2013), and which is commonly believed to be caused by the two compounds skatole (3-methylindole) and androstenone (5α-androst-16-en-3-on) (Stolzenbach et al. 2009). However, due to animal welfare issues, this practice isexpected to be voluntarily abandoned (Lunde et al 2013 and Font-i-Furnols 2012), which could well lead … Read more