CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Lipid oxidation is the main cause of nutritional and organoleptic deterioration of bird?s meat and eggs during storage. This process originates compounds responsible for unpleasant odours, reduces the amount of polyunsaturated fatty acids, vitamins and pigments, decreases the acceptability on consumers and generates compounds that may present toxicity. Furthermore, some dietary synthetic antioxidants have been restricted or banned in many countries. In this regard, phytogenic products and/or essential oils main components have been suggested as non-traditional alternatives in broiler diets to improve growth performance, products quality and even their welfare. Thymol (THY), a main component of oregano generally recognized as safe status (FDA, USA), has been proved as an effective antimicrobial and antioxidant compound with similar activity to buthylated hidroxytoluene (BHT), a synthetic antioxidant widely used in poultry industry. On the other hand, tocopherol (TOC) has also proved antioxidant activity and has shown synergistic antioxidant activity when combined with ascorbyl palmitate (AP). Herein, we evaluated whether broiler diet supplementation with THY, a formulation mix with TOC and AP (1:1), and a mixture of THY:TOC:AP (1:0.5:0.5, respectively) have potential to prevent meat oxidation. One day male broiler chicks with similar BW were randomly assigned to 1 of 5 dietary groups (4 replicates of 32 birds each) as follows: Basal (no feed supplements); BHT (1.33 mmol BHT/kg feed); TOCAP (0.67 mmol TOC+0.67 mmol AP/kg feed); THY (1.33 mmol THY/kg feed); and THY-TOCAP (0.67 mmol of THY+0.67 mmol of a mix 1:1 of TOCAP). Birds were slaughtered at day 42 and carcases placed at 4° C. Thigh samples were taken at 0, 5 and 10 days of storage. MDA determined by fluorescence HPLC was used to assess oxidative deterioration. Repeated measure ANOVAs and Fisher tests were used to detect differences at P