Introduction.

Among all breeding species that nowadays exist in animal production, maybe broiler meat is the one and most appreciated for human population. And this point of view sure it’s not casual, because it has so many important advantages in comparison with other kinds of meat we have in markets at disposal.

• It’s such a reasonable meat, for its cheap buying price.
• It has a high nutritional value.
• Its palatability makes it attractive or tolerable to most part of population.
• All ages of people are able to eat it , because of its digestibility.
• Simplicity on the quartering of the dressed carcass.
• There are so many different presentations to bring to final customers ( whole chicken, quartered, steaked, half-worked out, manufactured and ready to eat…).
• Simplicity on the ways to prepare.
• Worldwide, there’s no religion inconvenients to consume it.

The whole thing has in consequence that the total amount of chicken meat produced actually worldwide may have to be measured in “astronomical numbers”.

Principal features of fats in chicken meat.

We must consider fat contents in chicken meat very low, and it generally may fluctuate between 1% and 3%. The features and composition of this fat in the dressed carcass they change according to fat raw materials which have been used in manufacturing of balanced feeds for nourishment of birds in all fattening phases. Thus, the dressed carcass of chicken after slaughtering will have more or less quantity of different kinds of fat straightly related to the proportion of those types of fat the animals had eaten during fattening process. For example, the more we put fatty acid omega-3 in diet of birds, the more birds will settle down omega-3 in meat.

As it is well known, the presence of high levels of poliinsaturated fatty acids in animal meat is always favoured ( talking about human health ) because of their benefits in cardiovascular good working. However, poliinsaturated fatty acids are very sensitive to some not-desired biochemical reactions like oxidation and creation of free radicals. This fact may cause problems of organoleptic kind, which induce people to refuse chicken meat because of its bad colour, bad smell and bad taste. On the other hand it has been proved that this may cause toxicity in final consumers.

Solutions to oxidation problems in fat of chicken meat.

Under this circumstances, meat industry and specifically chicken meat producers for human consumption, have been searching and found different methods along years to avoid those bad reactions in meat fat of breeding birds. We are talking about the USE OF ANTIOXIDANTS.

These substances have the capability to decrease or stop the chain reaction of oxidative processes in fats, previously aforementioned.

We can make a simple first classification between synthetic antioxidants and antioxidants of natural origin.

The first ones are being more discussed and forbidden in the recent times on the part of consumers and actual legislation standards, since they have proved to be dangerous  because of their toxicity and trend to accumulate in tissues, specially in liver and adipous tissue.

Antioxidants of natural origin can be found in certain plants extracts, their seeds and their fruits. Thus, when some plant extracts as for example cimenol ring ( a phenolic chemical structure molecule and common to many vegetal species ) is added and mixed in very low proportion in poultry fattening feed, a decrease of oxidation levels in dressed carcasses fat is noticed at a later stage. At the same time seems that maybe it should be suggested the application of those substances directly over chicken meat to avoid as much as possible its fat oxidation.

In this way, by using and applying  plant extracts with no toxicity, we achieve to supply chicken meat with better nutritional and organoleptic qualities, in addition to make sure of a better preservation.

Finally, we can conclude that the use of a natural origin product like cimenol ring  it has so many benefits in preserving chicken meat fat from its oxidation, because of both efficiency and biosecurity.