Wooden Breast and White Striping Myopathies in Poultry

Describe wooden breast and white striping Myopathies in poultry and their impact on meat quality.

Due to intense genetic selection for growth rate in the poultry industry, an increase in consequential abnormalities has been seen especially in the breast muscles of chicken. These myopathies are described as wooden breast and white striping and have a drastic negative affect on the meat quality. White striping is less severe and doesn't affect the cooking properties significantly, but more so the visual quality. However the wooden breast has a more severe affect in the cooking properties and is very tough but from the naked eye looks fine before consumption. These abnormalities can occur separately or together. The cause of woody breast and white striping is still not known, but breast muscles with these abnormalities seem to have reduced capillary blood supply to the muscle which could be caused from the rapid growth. Without the sufficient capillaries, muscle damage occurs as lactic acid, a by-product of anaerobic respiration, cannot be cleared through the capillaries and remains in the muscle giving it that very stiff, or wooden, texture. Fillets with white striping, wooden breast or both abnormalities present have higher raw breast weights compared with normal fillets because of this. The quality of the meat is lowered because of the reduced water holding/binding abilities. This results in a lower marinade uptake and higher cooking loss. This is more significant when the wooden breast myopathy is present. In the end, a normal fillet has a 94.5% total yield and a fillet suffering from white striping an wooden breast has a 85.5% total yield. This is a real problem for the poultry industry and, to overcome it, understanding the true nature of what causes these myopathies is a must.

Works Cited

Mudala, S., M. Lorenzi, F. Soglia, C. Cavani, and M. Petracci. 2014. Implications of white striping and wooden breast abnormalities on quality traits of raw and marinated chicken meat. Animal : an international journal of animal bioscience. Available at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25500004 (verified 3 December 2016).

Broiler Meat Quality Issue De-mystified. 2013. The Poultry Site.

Available at http://www.thepoultrysite.com/articles/2768/broiler-meat-quality-issue-demystified/ (verified 3 December 2016).

Woody Breast Condition. 2014. The Poultry Site.

Available at http://www.thepoultrysite.com/articles/3274/woody-breast-condition/