Use of a Blunt Version of Meullenet-Owens Razor Shear to Analyze Meat Qualities of Broilers with Woody Breast Myopathy and Reared to Various Ages

Broiler breast meat tenderness is an important meat quality attribute. There has been an increase in incidences of woody breast along with white striping as meat quality defects. These defects have been found to negatively impact meat qualities of broiler breast fillets. Woody breast can be classified by the degree of hardness into normal (NORM) and severe (SEV). The Meullenet-Owens Razor Shear (MORS) method was developed to assess broiler meat tenderness and a blunt version (BMORS) has been reported to be more sensitive at higher degrees of toughness. The present study was intended to determine the effect of age, debone time, strain, and woody breast severity on meat quality. Sarcomere length (SL) increased as deboning time increased and high breast yield (HY) strain had greater SL than standard breast yield (SY) strain (P<0.05). HY strain had overall higher cook loss (P<0.05). Older broilers had greater myofibrillar diameter (P<0.05). Older broilers had greater total collagen (P0.05) on collagen content. In NORM fillets there were no significant differences for MORSE and BMORSE, and higher cook yield due to age (P>0.05); on the other hand SEV fillets had greater BMORSE, longer SL and lower cook yield at 9 wks of age (P<0.05). SEV fillets also had greater insoluble, soluble, and total collagen than NORM fillets at 9 wks (P<0.05). The findings suggest that BMORS could be used to differentiate shear values, but more research is needed to determine its relationship to sensory aspects at a wide range of shear values resulting from deboning at multiple debone times and/or varying broiler ages with various severity of woody breast.