Work

European badger (Meles meles) – potential novelty enhancement for meat products

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Customers show increased interest in meat obtained from animals raised as naturally as possible. With the increased population, however, humans will have to consider the consummation of animals previously outside their focus. European badger (Meles meles) is a widespread adaptable species that could be inserted into the human diet as game meat addition. In this study, we prepared meatloaves with badger meat addition and performed analyses to determine chemical composition, amino acid, and fatty acid profiles. When compared to the control, we observed very few differences between the control without badger meat and experimental samples with various European badger meat additions. Regarding color changes, only yellowness (b*) was affected and with highest badger meat addition we observed 2.01 increase in comparison to the control group. In chemical composition we observed decrease of fat content by 1.50% in Exp_4 group compared to control group. Amino acid profile showed no significant differences among groups. The most prevalent amino acids in out samples were Leucine and Lysine, approximately 2,06 and 2,25 g/100 g respectively. Even with those unconvincing results, we believe that badger meat should be considered as an enhancement of the human diet, but maybe in a different form or product.

Source: Future Foods

DOI: 10.1016/j.fufo.2025.100573

Authors: Peter Haščík, Matej Čech, Marek Bobko, Melina Korčok, Lukáš Jurčaga

Institution: Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra

Language: English

Topic: Meat and Animal Product Quality

Subfield: Animal Science and Zoology

Field: Agricultural and Biological Sciences

Domain: Life Sciences

SDG: Zero hunger

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,990