Chicken breeders
are stumped by a new condition called woody breast.
It’s becoming a
worrisome issue for processing companies that want larger birds for larger
portions of breast meat.
As growers raise
broilers to heavier weights, this new concern has arisen and neither scientists
nor breeders have been able to identify a solution.
Wooden breast
fillets have been shown to have a lower water binding capacity as measured by
marinade uptake, retention, cook loss and overall yield, report scientists from
Texas and Arkansas.
Because of keen
demand for white breast meat, more than half of broilers raised in the United
States reach a market weight of more than six pounds and a quarter of them top
7.5 pounds.
The trend to bigger
birds is expected to continue.
Woody breast is
defined as breast muscle that is hard to the touch, bulging in appearance and
often pale in colour.
However, the sarcomeres
(basic contractile unit of muscle) are actually longer in hard,
"woody" fillets compared with typical carcasses, which indicates that
their state of contraction is less than the contractile state in normal
fillets.
Consumer panels do
not describe the meat as any tougher, but do call it “rubbery” and “stringy”.
“The textural
attributes of woody breast are complex, going beyond traditional toughness
issues usually surrounding broiler meat. This complexity has yet to be fully
determined,” the researchers say.
Consumers in the
food-service industry have complained about the quality of woody-breast
chicken.
