Technical note: estimation of real rabbit meat consumption in Italy

As in other livestock species, the annual per  capita consumption of rabbit meat is currently estimated as the ratio of the total weight of carcasses available for consumption to the number of inhabitants of a certain region. The aim of this work was to establish conversion coefficients from carcass to edible lean meat and estimate real rabbit meat consumption in Italy. Accordingly, a total of 24 rabbits were slaughtered at 2  different ages to obtain carcasses representative of the main market categories in Northern Italy: medium-size (carcass weight of about 1.4  kg) and heavy-size (carcass weight of about 1.8  kg). Chilled carcasses were used to determine offal, dissectible fat, bone and meat weights and yields. Experimentally obtained conversion factors from carcass to edible lean meat and estimated meat waste percentage at retail and consumption levels were subsequently used to estimate the real per capita amount of rabbit meat consumed in Italy. The finding of this study revealed that, if compared to the medium-size group, heavy size carcasses had higher lean meat yield for both intermediate (92.9 vs. 92.4%; P<0.05) and hind parts (84.3 vs. 79.1%; P<0.001). On the contrary, the meat yield of fore part was higher in the medium-size group (66.2 vs. 65.5%; P<0.001) compared to heavy-size carcasses. Eventually, overall meat yield was higher in heavy-size carcasses compared to medium-size ones (64.4 vs. 63.2%; P<0.001). By using these conversion factors and estimated overall losses at retailing and home-consumption (15%), we estimated that real per capita annual rabbit meat consumption is 0.50 kg in Italy, which is only 54% compared to the estimated apparent consumption (0.90 kg).