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Reduce Woody Breast and White Striping in Poultry Meat with Dietary Approach

Published: November 8, 2017
Summary
Recent findings indicate that altering broiler chicken diets can help mitigate the severity of woody breast and white striping, two poultry meat quality issues that appear to be increasing in prevalence in many markets. A multitude of poultry researchers are exploring various approaches to eradicate these myopathies, and Novus International’s poultry scientists have recently concluded that ...
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Authors:
Vivek Kuttappan
Cargill
Dr Ajay Bhoyar
EW Nutrition
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Badal Singh
25 de julio de 2019

Sir, what is the actual region for this problem?

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Elizabeth Davis
Novus
13 de agosto de 2019
Badal Singh Hello. Here is the response from Dr. Vivek Kuttappan: "Thanks for your question. I believe you are asking about the reason for this problem. The exact reason for this condition is not clear. However, a lot of research has reported that birds with heavier fillets have a higher chance of having myopathies. The hypothesis is that when birds have heavier/larger breast fillets, the blood circulation to the muscle tissue could become compromised resulting in accumulation of metabolic waste products and oxidative stress causing damage to muscle tissue. Some of the recent research has shown that there could be metabolic differences (mainly lipid and carbohydrate metabolism) in high feed efficiency birds which makes them more prone to develop oxidative stress, contributing to higher susceptibility of myopathies."
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Badal Singh
13 de septiembre de 2019

Elizabeth Davis thank you very much for the information.

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Raghuvir Trifale
Exotic Biosolutions
29 de abril de 2020

Nice explanation. Thanks.

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Emad Elgazzar
AL WADI POULTRY FARMS COMPANY
27 de agosto de 2019
Hello nice to send to you .I Hope everything are all right excuse me i knew that breast muscle in poultry is poorly worked muscle .and the act of contraction and relaxation depend on calcium mainly?
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Elizabeth Davis
Novus
28 de agosto de 2019

Emda, please see this response from Dr. Vivek Kuttappan:

Thanks for your comments. Sorry, I am not sure if have any specific question/s, but the following are my comments on the topics you discussed.

Breast muscle in birds is mainly meant for the movement of wings while flying. In the case of broiler birds, this muscle is not used much (as they do not fly) and are mainly consist of glycolytic (anaerobic) muscle fibers.

Calcium ions play an important role in muscle contraction. As a result of a signal for muscle contraction, calcium ions will be released which binds to troponin protein complex in muscle exposing the myosin-binding sites in actin. Binding of actin and myosin along with the utilization of ATP results in the active contraction of the muscle. In fact, higher muscle levels of calcium have been associated with severe myopathies (wooden breast), as reported by some studies, which could be related to the myopathic degenerative changes.

Hope it’s helpful.

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manoj Singh
4 de septiembre de 2019

The deep pectoral myopathy can be induced by vigorous wing flapping in both broilers and turkey which results in breast muscles contracting and the deep pectoral muscles filled with blood and due to the inelastic sheath around the muscle the pressure within the muscles increases which reduces blood flow in and out of the muscle. This can then result in muscle cell death in deep pectoral muscles. Vigorous flapping must occur sometimes prior to slaughter to result in wooden breast. Wing flapping and struggling during shackling in the processing plant has been shown at death to affect muscle glycogen and lactic acid content at death which increases the risk of PSE myopathy. To date, there is no evidence that wooden breast can be induced by excessive bird activity, but it should be considered good management practice to reduce excessive wing-flapping activity in broilers at all times. Ensuring birds are used to human activity within the house and always handled in a calm and careful way reduces risk of vigorous wing flapping and potential damage to breast muscle.

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Jean-François Gabarrou
Phode
10 de septiembre de 2019

Reduce fear in broiler's production is the key point!

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Tahir Naseem
30 de septiembre de 2019

Assalam o Alaikum
(All of you be blessed with peace ).
I think deep pectoral myopathy is not a very common problem. However white striping is a major problem faced by broiler processing units.
No doubt it is the major problem in breeds with high breast yield.
But I have noticed that these stripes are fats in nature and their prevalence is more in the birds over 2 kg live weight.
So breed selection (with low prevalence), administration of fat metabolism enhancers in feed or drinking water and marketing the birds
before 2Kg live weight can remarkably reduce the chances of white striping in broilers.

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