Compared to local free range poultry, the taste of intensive production of poultry and its products are losing it original taste and natural flavour. Is it the breed or the feed formulation that is affecting these trends?
- Some antibiotics affect taste of meat they should be withdraw from the feed a week before killing the birds.
- Also feed production and feed formulation has brought about this dramatic changes;
- Alot of innovation has been incorporated into feed production and formulation over times and this has contributed positively to taste and flavor of poultry products. Feed formulation contributed indirectly to certain extent.
- it is actually the ingredients type that affect flavor, taste, palatability and acceptability of the feed. example where you have high inclusion level of fish meal or groundnut cake meal for example will affect these parameters; also the processing of the ingredients eg in case of soya either full fat or extruded fat will affect taste; type of corn either white or yellow imparts on the color of egg yolk.
- The type of additives used in the formulation also have effect on these parameters.
- Off-flavors are nearly always caused by feed or ground/bedding related factors.Influencing flavor in a positive way is much harder to accomplish.Breed certainly plays its part in this respect.
- Slow growing broiler types develop their muscles in another way than fast growing ones and this has its effects on the perceived quality of the meat derived from them.
- Breed has an effect on poultry meat taste.
- As in any other animal with simple stomach, feeding strongly affects the fatty acid composition of poultry, which in turn very much modifies flavor.
- The flavor compounds of cooked poultry are formed mainly through lipid oxidation and Maillard reactions (also thiamine degradation and other chemical reactions, of course).
- Oxidation of different fatty acids leads to a different profile of volatile flavor compounds, so a diet with a different fatty acid profile will for sure lead to a different poultry flavor.
- Also age at slaughter is a main factor of meat quality (texture and flavour), and it is obviously the reason why slow growing animals are generally preferred (local chickens, organic production…)
- The effect of diet is much lower, and mainly concerns the fat content (quantity and FA composition) of meat. The direct links are mainly found in the case of negative effects such as off flavours (fishmeal, glucosinolated etc).
- Meat color (and egg color) can be directly affected (and manipulated) by diet formulation; which can be used when there is a consumer preference for colored meat or egg yolk.