Abstract
At each stage preslaughter, pigs are exposed to different stressors that, both individually and in interaction with one another, can compromise their welfare resulting in meat quality defects. The development of tools for no time-consuming, non-invasive and real-time monitoring of animal welfare preslaughter is increasingly required by the livestock industry with the objective to identify the animal welfare problem by feed-back mechanisms through the pork chain and correct the cause of animal losses, and carcass and meat quality downgrading. Tools for the measurement of blood lactate level and body temperature variation in response to stress, and novel animal welfare auditing protocols have been developed or scientifically validated under