Muscle metabolism and meat quality abnormalities

In the past decades, the growing demand of poultry meat had led to progressive improvements in genetic selection to produce fast-growing broilers, which however induced the appearance of several spontaneous, idiopathic muscle abnormalities along with an increased susceptibility to stress-induced myopathies such as deep pectoral myopathy, pale-soft-and exudative and more recently muscle growth related abnormalities such as white-striping, wooden breast and spaghetti meat. This chapter evaluates the consequences of genetic selection on muscle traits and describes the relevance and effects of the major breast abnormalities on the nutritional, technological and sensorial characteristics of meat.