Meat quality in fast-growing chicken broilers

During the last few decades, the consumption of poultry meat has tremendously increased and also the current forecast and projection studies point out that poultry market will be keep growing in future. Among the several reasons that support this trend, there is definitively the healthy and nutritional image of poultry meat together with suitability for further processing. However, as a consequence of tremendous progressive improvements in genetic selection to produce fast-growing broiler chickens, several muscle abnormalities have appeared during the last 30 years by impairing both fresh product quality and processing abilities of poultry meat. The most current poultry meat quality concerns are associated with deep pectoral muscle disease which impairs product appearance, and increased occurrence of problems related with the meat’s poor ability to hold water during processing and storage (PSE-like condition). In addition, recent abnormalities have appeared in chicken breast muscles such as white striping (characterized by superficial white striations) and wooden breast (characterized by pale and bulged areas with substantial hardness) which impair both appearance and technological traits of breast meat. This review will deal with the consequences of genetic selection on muscle traits and it describes the relevance and effect of main breast abnormalities on nutritional, technological, sensorial, and microbial quality of raw and processed meat.