Evaluation of contaminants, oxidation status and characterisation of volatile fraction in transformed swine meat chain. [Valutazione della presenza di inquinanti, dello stato di ossidazione e caratterizzazione della frazione volatile nei prodotti della filiera della carne suina]

Nowadays the quality of food is a multifactorial concept, which include safety, nutritional and edonistic aspect. Concerning the safety problems, it is important to assess the presence of undesirable compounds, which can affect negatively the normal organism physiology. The sources of these substances can be exogenous (environmental pollution) or endogenous (related to degradation of some components). The aim of this paper was to investigate on PAH contamination of 4 different types of feeds (and corresponding ingredients) and possible transfer of PAH contamination to the meat of 4 groups of pigs (of 8 pigs each) feeded with the 4 different formulations. Among feed ingredients, the most contaminated resulted to be tender wheat bran and soybean (BaP mean amounts of 0,248 and 0,153, respectively), while barley and corn showed the lowest contamination levels. All the meat samples showed similar and very low contamination levels, to confirm the fact that PAHs ingested with feeds are rapidly metabolised. The volatile fraction was assessed on feed, raw material and meat. Particular attention was paid for marker of secondary oxidation, like hexanal. The results obtained showed a low amount of hexanal, between not detectable (<0.2 μg/ kg) and 20 μg/kg. Among the raw material, soybean presented the lowest amount (from <0.5 to 0.6 μg/kg), instead the quantity in barley was variable. The feeds showed high amount of hexanal: control fodder had 134 ± 69 μg/kg of hexanal, fodder + oil + vitamin E had 146 ± 72 μg/kg, fodder + sunflower oil had 182±32 μg/kg, fodder + vitamin E had 161 ± 67 μg/kg. The meat samples presented hexanal, eptanal, octanale, nonanale, butanoic acid and hexanoic acid, but in lower amount than feed.