Commercial pre slaughter blue light ambience for controlling stress and broiler chicken PSE (Pale, Soft, Exsudative) meat

摘要

The influence of light on the birds behavior has been the subject of research and blue light is known to maintain their ambience comfort. The objective of this work is to report the blue light environmental effect on the control of broiler stress by measuring the occurrence of PSE meat just before slaughtering. Birds (n = 602) were divided into two groups before slaughter at the point of being hung on shackles: broilers group under monochromatic blue light (fluorescent lamp, ～6000K) ambience and control group under yellow light (incandescent lamp, ～3000K).The chickens were slaughtered at a commercial abattoir and the fillets (Pectoralis major m.) were collected 24h post-mortem and analyzed for pH and color (CIELAB system). The fillets were classified as PSE meat associating pH (<5.8) and lightness (L *> 53) values and results were submitted to the Student t test (Statistica 7.0). Fillet meat samples in the control group showed pHf of 5.77 lower value (p < 0.05) in comparison to samples from the group under blue light with pHf=5.81. Samples in the control group presented L~* = 54.26, b~*= 6.27 and samples from birds under blue light ambience presented L~* = 52.86 and b~* = 5.22 (p < 0.05). These results revealed that the birds under monochromatic blue light ambience just before slaughtering contributed for alleviating the ante-mortem stress by observing the decrease in 14.0% in the occurrence of PSE meat.