IMPROVING THE QUALITY CONTROL OF BROILER CHICKEN CARCASSES THROUGH THE USE OF PHARMACOLOGICAL AGENTS FOR THE CORRECTION AND PREVENTION OF PRE-SLAUGHTER STRESS
This article presents an experiment carried out on broilers of Arbor Acres cross in an industrial poultry farm. For the experiment, the authors divided the broiler birds into three groups. Poultry of the control group received basic ration; poultry of the 1st experimental group received feed additive at a dose of 1269 g/t feed 5 days before slaughter; poultry of the 2nd experimental group received feed additive at a dose of 1693 g/t feed 5 days before slaughter. Broilers were slaughtered on day 38 of rearing. The following types of defects were recorded during slaughtering: dermatitis, cellulitis; back scratches; splinter hemorrhages, bruises, hematomas, bruises; dislocations, closed and open fractures; poor bleeding; skin tears; under-plucking; the presence of internal organs; over-steaming of the carcass. The authors applied the Ishikawa method, Pareto charts, ABC analysis, and cluster analysis to assess the quality of broiler chicken carcasses. Based on the results of these studies, the authors identified 41.7 % of defects that reduce the quality of poultry carcasses and 58.3 % of critical defects that lead to meat culling. Using clustering methods and ABC analysis, the authors identified the most important category of critical defect, D2C. This defect in poultry occurs during the rearing and processing phase. The application of the stress-corrector reduced the number of D2C defects in the 1st experimental group by 33.3 %; in the 2nd experimental group by 18.2; D2GD in the 2nd experimental group by 22.2 %. Thus, the use of statistical evaluation methods increases the efficiency of industrial control over the quality level of broiler chicken carcasses.