Volume: 56 Issue: 1
Year: 2025, Page: 152-161, Doi: https://doi.org/10.51966/jvas.2025.56.1.152-161
Received: Oct. 1, 2024 Accepted: Dec. 30, 2024 Published: March 31, 2025
Meat inspections are aimed to detect animal diseases or health problems early, helping to prevent foodborne illnesses, ensure the quality of animal-based products, and protect public health. Common pathological changes seen in healthy finishing pigs at slaughter, often manifesting as subclinical lesions, include pneumonia, pleuritis, atrophic rhinitis, arthritis, arthrosis, gastric ulcers, hyperkeratosis, white spots on the liver, ulcers in the preputial diverticulum, skin lesions, and abscesses. A study was conducted among 82 pigs received at the Meat Technology Unit, KVASU, Mannuthy to identify the major pathological conditions in finishing pigs. Out of the 82 animals included in the study, 81.71 per cent showed one or more lesions during the post-mortem inspection (PMI). Key post-mortem findings included abscesses (23.17%), pleuritis (19.25%), white spots on the liver (13.41%), white spots on the kidney (8.54 %), pneumonia (7.32%), pericarditis (4.88%), and hydronephrosis. Farm 2 showed a higher prevalence of pleuritic lesions (33.33%) and white spots on both the liver and kidney (41.67 %), while farm 5 had the highest occurrence of abscesses at 60.87 per cent. Additionally, pneumonic lesions (33.34%) and pleuritis (33.34%) were more frequent in animals over 200 kg. Microscopic examination revealed bronchopneumonia and bronchiolitis in lung tissue, while hepatic lesions exhibited abscess formation and interlobular fibrous tissue proliferation. Signs of congestion and haemorrhage were noted in affected tissues of the heart, kidney, and intestine.
Keywords: Pneumonia, pleuritis, pigs, congestion, haemorrhage
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© 2025 Ameena Asharaf et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Ameena Asharaf, Vasudevan V.N., Sathu T., Irshad A., Uma R. and Anoopraj R. Incidence of gross and histopathological lesions in commercially available pigs slaughtered at Meat Technology Unit, Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University. J. Vet. Anim. Sci. 56 (1):152-161