RICERCA ITALIANA     

Quality, quality perception and product traceability in sheep meat production systems

Università degli Studi di Udine

Abstract

Sheep breeding plays an important economic role, and it is very suitable for the currently invoked husbandry: diffusion in disadvantaged areas; harmony with landscape problems; integrated development of farming with agri-tourism, cultural activities, handicraft, environment conservation; local breeds defence and animal bio-diversity preservation. Furthermore, sheep breeding offers a wide variety of products which, as regards lamb meat, comes from specific combinations between genetic type and management, maintaining an historical and cultural link with the geographic origin and, thanks to tradition and food habits, gaining a very good local appreciation. This picture potentially meets the current consumers' demands, i.e. availability of safety foods which are typical, with high quality and healthiness, with guaranteed origin, produced with transparent, environment-friend and animal-friend techniques.
The proposed research project suits this picture with the following aims:
- to represent lamb meat production systems variety, as regards lamb types and meat nutritive and sensory quality;
- to deepen the examination of the zootechnical reasons and of the biological basis of such variability;
- to evaluate the possibility of developing and applying rapid analytical methods for tracing the geographic area, the genetic origin and the feeding regime in the different lamb meat production systems;
- to estimate the relative contribution of the >>>

Principal Investigator

Edi PIASENTIER Università degli Studi di UDINE

Research Objectives

Sheep production, beside its economic role which is significant for Peninsular and Insular Italy, plays important environmental and social functions in many fragile areas of Italy, contributing to soil and landscape preservation, to rural area and people maintaining and to cultural heritage, identity and local knowledge defence. These roles are strong particularly in less favoured rural areas, where livestock breeding represents an index of vitality and occupation of the territory, and constitutes an element of equilibrium for natural and landscape environmental values. The general evolution of agriculture and rural areas towards a potential strong increase of abandoned areas, threatens this equilibrium and urges the creation of long-lasting management systems of territory and animal resources. Lasting of agricultural management systems involves first of all the economy of the enterprise, thus it is important to use all the available opportunities to add value to animal products, to enlarge their marketing and improve their competitiveness. Taking into account consumers' interest for typicity and specificity, products' quality is the base for a rural development strategy which value local resources, by means of integrated projects, able to connect the product to a territory, to its traditions, cultural heritage and natural beauties.
Scientific research can contribute to give value to local products by defining their objective quality bases and by identifying traits >>>

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

Sheep production, beside its economic role which is significant for Peninsular and Insular Italy (Boyazoglu, 1992), accomplishes to some of the most important traits that are nowadays requested to animal management: widespread in marginal areas; harmonisation with landscape problems; development of farms integrated with agri-tourism, cultural activities, craft and landscape conservation activities; improvement of rural areas by the marketing of added value products; preservation of local breeds and animal biodiversity.
The great pedological, climatic and orographic diversity of the territory, the number of populations and breeds and the different husbandry purposes give the basis for a strong diversification and geographical characterisation of Italian sheep production (as it can be derived by reading the B models of the different research units involved in the present proposal), as far as the premise for a wide and rich products variety. Different types of lamb are produced and commercialised in Italy, with different quality of carcasses and meat, derived from specific combinations between genetic type and breeding system, which maintain a historical and cultural link with their geographic origin, and, through tradition and culture, are preferred locally (Sañudo et al, 1998).
This picture meets consumers' current needs for high quality food products of known and guaranteed origin (Grunert e coll., 2004; Verbeke and Vackier, 2004). A particular importance is >>>