One hundred and seven people took part in a central location test, organised to evaluate the
consumer expectations generated by information on animal feeding system and to assess the effect of this
knowledge on the hedonic ratings of local lamb meat. Using a nine-point hedonic scale, first blind and then
informed scores were collected on two types of Istrian Milk meat, from lambs fed either on suckled milk and
pasture (P meat) or hay and concentrate (C meat). In the blind condition, a significant difference was found
between samples, C receiving higher scores than P meat (6.9 vs 6.4 points; p<0.05). There was a significant
difference between expected, E, and blind, B, evaluation for both types of meat: the disconfirmation was positive
for C (-0.9; p<0.01), which was perceived to be better than expected, and negative for P meat (0.9; p<0.01).
Informed liking scores (I) revealed no significant differences between the two types of lamb meat and did not
significantly differ from the blind hedonic scores for C meat. On the contrary, providing information on the animal
feeding system positively affected the liking of P meat (I-B= 0.5; p<0.01). However this assimilation was not
complete (I-E= -0.4; p<0.01), implying that both extrinsic and intrinsic characteristics have an impact on the
informed liking of pasture-produced lamb meat.
