Anais do Simpósio Latino Americano de Ciências de Alimentos
Proceedings of 14 SLACA - Latin American Symposium on Food Science

The incidence of the Wooden Breast myopathy (WB) in the meat industry is increasingly high and causes inestimable economic losses. This work seeks to study the impact of this myopathy on consumer perception. Yet, the current context associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, urge scientists to perform consumer studies under different scenarios. This research aims to evaluate hedonic acceptability and purchase intention for normal chicken breasts and those affected by different degrees of WB, in different conditions (non- informed vs informed), and in different scenarios (face-to-face vs online). Normal (N), Moderate (WBM), and Severe WB (WBS) chicken breasts were evaluated by 197 participants in the face-to-face and by 200 in the online scenario for both conditions and tests. Participants’ perception did not show differences among informed conditions, conversely to the scenario. N samples show higher scores in both tests in the face-to-face scenario, but this was not the case for the samples evaluated in the online scenario, where WBM samples were better accepted and did not present differences compared to N breast samples regarding purchase intention. This work shed light on the importance of the scenario for consumer perception and the necessity of reformulated objectives and experimental designs in the current pandemic context.