A comparison of the quality of nutria meat and rabbit meat

The aim of this study was to compare the meat yield and meat quality of Standard nutria with that of the purebred Czech White rabbit breed. Twenty nutrias were fattened to 8 months of age, and 36 rabbits to 90 days of age, under defined conditions. They were fed complete feed mixtures specific for each of the two species. The results of our study show that the rabbits had a demonstrably higher dressing-out percentage (P ≤ 0.001; 60.18 compared with 55.74%). On the other hand, nutria had a significantly lower proportion of perirenal fat (P ≤ 0.044) than rabbits. A significantly lower content of crude protein was recorded in the nutria thigh muscle (P ≤ 0.004). The total cholesterol was significantly lower in nutria than in rabbit meat (P ≤ 0.001; 60 mg compared with 92 mg·100 g-1 of meat). The nutria meat also had a lower L* value (P ≤ 0.003) than the rabbits. That value expresses the lightness of the meat, and reflects that fact that nutria meat is darker than rabbit meat. The nutria also had a significantly lower proportion of monounsaturated fatty acids (P ≤ 0.001), although the proportion of polyunsaturated fatty acids (P ≤ 0.031; 31.14% as compared with 26.99%) and the n6/n3 fatty acids ratio were demonstrably higher in nutria meat (P ≤ 0.001; 16.50% as compared with 7.47 %).