Attitudes and beliefs of Eastern European consumers towards piglet castration and meat from castrated pigs

Castration of male piglets is a common practice to avoid boar taint but is being questioned. The present work has an exploratory character and aims to investigate the beliefs and attitudes of Eastern European consumers regarding boar taint, surgical castration immunocastration and perception of meat from castrated pigs and to find out possible segments of consumers regarding these attitudes and beliefs. For this purpose, a consumer study was carried out involving 5508 consumers from 13 Eastern European countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Croatia, North Macedonia, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine). The questionnaire included statements related to beliefs about castration and perception of meat from castrated pigs, attitudes towards meat from castrated pigs. Results show that in general beliefs and attitudes of the consumers are not defined, probably because of the lack of knowledge (information was not provided to the consumers) towards these issues. Three different clusters of consumers were obtained with different beliefs towards castration.

[Hepatic tuberculosis]

Hepatic tuberculosis is well-known anatomicopathologically, consequent to necropsy and liver biopsy puncture, but the clinical aspect when the signs of the pulmonary localization are not dominant, may be similar to other "masked" affections, hepatic or extrahepatic, more often chronic hepatitis, hepatic tumours or prolonged febrile syndrome with many etiologic possibilities. The past history of the patients is very important as it confirms the observation of the histopathologic and possibly bacteriological examinations of a liver fragment. Three cases presumptively clinically diagnosed are presented and histopathologically verified for confirmation of the facts illustrated.