Broiler chicken welfare. Effect of ante mortem ambience illuminations on the incidence of
Pale, Soft and Exudative (PSE) meat.
1
2
1
3
3
Rafael H. Carvalho, Moisés Grespan, Fábio A. G. Coró, Elza I. Ida, Adriana L. Soares,
1
Massami Shimokomaki. Programa de Mestrado Profissional, Universidade Tecnológica
Federal do Paraná, Campus de Londrina, Avenida dos Pioneiros, 3131, CEP 86036-370
2
Londrina, Paraná, Brasil. Copacol, Cooperativa Agroindustrial Consolata, Rua Desembargador
3,4
Munhoz de Mello, 176, CEP 85415-000, Cafelândia, Paraná, Brasil. Programa de Pós
Graduação em Ciência dos Alimentos e Ciência Animal, Universidade Estadual de Londrina,
Londrina, PR, Brasil.
1,4
The objective of this work was to report the effect of blue, green and red light diffusers on the
broiler stress measured through the occurrence of PSE on breast fillet meat just before
slaughtering. This study was carried out in a commercial plant using 400 broiler chickens
dividing them into 4 treatments before slaughter at the point of being hung on shackles. The
luminaires with two lamps fluorescent each were covered with diffusers of different colors:
Treatment 1(T1) – blue light diffuser (430nm), Treatment 2 (T2) – green light diffuser (545nm),
Treatment 3 (T3) - red light diffuser (610nm), Treatment 4 (T4)- white light diffuser (400-700nm).
PSE meat was characterized by measuring pH (<5.80) and lightness (L*>53). The Tukey’s test
(p<0.05) was used to determine significant difference among treatments. The average pH
values for meat samples from treatments T1, T2, T3 and T4 were 5.87, 5.83, 5.82 and 5.78,
respectively. T1 presented the highest pH value, and T2 and T3 showed similar values whilst
T4 presented the lowest pH value. L* values for T1 (51.59), T2 (51.71), T3 (52.06), and T4
(52.56) did not show significant difference among samples. Taking into consideration the pH
values, broiler chicken exposed to the blue, green, and red lights presented lower % of PSE
meat as 20, 22, 25%, respectively while samples under white lights presented the highest value
of 41%. As conclusion, it can be postulated that the ambience of white light was the worst
treatment keeping a stressful light conditions before slaughtering.