Meat quality and muscle myopathies of broilers in multiple market segments

Abstract

The increase in the consumption of chicken meat in the world intensified production, which allowed the emergence of myopathies associated with broiler meat. Thus, studies with myopathy associates and quality meat of broilers become very important. This study will detect the wooden breast and associate with the main myopathies existing in the meat, such as, the presence of deep pectoral myopathy (DPM), white striping, and spaghetti myopathy will be assessed. The aim of this work will be to study the quality of poultry meat affected or not by wooden breast myopathy of broilers slaughtered at 5 and 9 weeks of age on a weekly basis. Specifically, mechanisms for changes in meat quality due to age will be evaluated. Birds from top commercial broiler strains (Cobb 700, Cobb 500, and Ross 708 and 308) will be grown and the broilers will be processed at the UA processing plant using commercial. Several aspects of carcass and meat quality will be assessed in this study, Carcass Dimension, Fillet Dimension, Myopathy Assessment, Color, Drip Loss and Cook Loss, Shear Analysis, Muscle pH, sarcomere, Fiber Diameter (Histology), Fiber Typing, Proximate Analysis. A completely randomized design will be used and data will be analysed by ANOVA using PROC MIXED with pen as a random effect (SAS Institute, 2009). Means will be separated using the Least Significant Difference Multiple Comparison Procedure with a significance level of P < 0.05.Chi-squared analysis will be conducted to assess the occurrence of white striping and woody breast in the treatments. Significance will be determined at P < 0.05 for all parameters. Regression procedures will be used to evaluate meat quality characteristics as a function of weight. (AU)