Marescotti, Maria Elena Demartini, Eugenio Gibbert, Michael Viganò, Roberto Gaviglio, Anna 2021-01-16 The growing body of literature concerning the hunted wild game meat (HWGM) supply chain is mainly focused on the final consumer, while little is known about upstream production processes. Even though the hunter plays a central role here, it is not well understood how hunters themselves perceive their role in the various phases of the production process. The present study explores Italian hunters’ perception of the HWGM supply chain and compares it to their perception towards the conventional farmed meat supply chain. We distinguish several phases of this production process and find that the final phase related to on-site game dressing is considered problematic, perhaps because hunters perceive themselves as less skilled than professional butchers. The results, in fact, show that hunters prefer hunted products over farmed meat, but that they consider hunted wild boar meat less safe compared to farmed pork. Findings from this study provide a rare glimpse from the inside of the supply chain and reveals the needs for a broad risk assessment analysis on the Italian game meat supply chain. Considering the development of the Italian emerging market of the HWGM, our results also highlight the relevance of training activities on hunters in order to increase the safety and quality of the final product. application/pdf https://localhost:5000/ark:/12658/srd1319284 https://susi.usi.ch/global/documents/319284 https://susi.usi.ch/documents/319284/files/Gibbert_2021_MDPI_foods.pdf eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.3390/foods10010174 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/ark/12658/srd1319284 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess CC BY Foods. - 2021, vol. 10, no. 1, p. 15 p Hunters Hunting activity Wild boar meat Farmed meat Wild game meat Food supply chain management Food perception Survey Risk-assessement info:eu-repo/classification/udc/664 Disentangling individual phases in the hunted vs. farmed meat supply chain : exploring hunters’ perceptions in Italy http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501