Influence of preslaughter stress on poultry meat

In the present article the authors consider the importance of issue of the poultry meat quality. The increasing demand for poultry meat provides for the rapid growth of industrial stock of poultry, which contributes to appearance of meat with various defects in muscle tissue: PSE meat, that features low pH, pale color, soft and watery texture, and DFD meat — it is more dense and drier, of dark saturated color. Till now, the causes and mechanisms of appearance of those anomalies still haven’t been unambiguously formulated, however, a large number of publications prove the influence of the genetic characteristics of modern crosses of broilers and turkeys on disturbances in Ca 2+ metabolism process in the sarcoplasm of muscle fibers. The uncontrolled release of calcium along with the high temperature of slaughtered poultry carcasses immediately after slaughter provokes an intense decrease in pH and launches denaturation processes in proteins. The numerous studies have shown deterioration in functional and technological properties of meat in stress-sensitive poultry, such as moisture-binding capacity and high acidity, which increases loss of meat juice during its storage and its weight during heat treatment. Recent publications have been devoted to development of a strategy for use of PSE poultry meat and search for efficient processing of PSE poultry meat, since the scientific community does not provide direct evidence on possibility of genetic adjustment of the poultry in order to exclude the occurrence of PSE quality of meat.