Ante-mortem and Post-mortem Inspection and Relationship between Findings in a North Albanian Pig Slaughterhouse

In June 2014, Albania was granted EU candidate status, thus starting a process of compliancewith the membership criteria. In this context, a modern meat inspection approach in line with theEuropean legislation was applied to a pig slaughterhouse in northern Albania in order to investigatethe ante-mortem (AM) and post-mortem (PM) conditions and the relationship between these findings.For this purpose, 3930 pigs divided into 35 batches were evaluated over a 3-month period. Themost frequent AM conditions recorded were tail lesions and dyspnea (9.1%), followed by skin (8.9%)and ear lesions (8.5%), while in the PM inspections, pleuritis was the most frequently observedcondition (10.2%), followed by pneumonia (8.5%), liver alterations (5.7%), milk spot liver (3.8%), andpericarditis (3.3%). With the exception of liver alterations, the other PM lesions mentioned werepositively associated with lesions on the ears (OR = 1.036; p < 0.001) and skin (OR = 1.026; p = 0.011)and dyspnea (OR = 1.021; p = 0.005), confirming the link between these variables and the healthand welfare conditions of pigs on farms. Overall, the evidence that emerged from this Albanianslaughterhouse can be considered in line with other European contexts, especially in light of theconsiderable variability in the data present in the literature.