Meat Quality and Sensory Analysis of Broiler Breast Fillets with Woody Breast Muscle Myopathy

Recently, the poultry industry has encountered an emerging muscle myopathy known as woody breast (WB), which is characterized by hardness throughout the Pectoralis major muscle. Two experiments were performed to assess sensory characteristics and acceptability of WB meat and to determine the effect of broiler age on meat quality factors in varying severities of WB. Fillets were categorized as normal (NORM), moderate (MOD), or severe (SEV) WB. In Experiment 1 (Exp. 1), descriptive (n=9 trained panelists) and consumer (n=74 panelists) sensory analysis was conducted with NORM and SEV fillets at hot and cold serving temperatures (HOTNORM, COLDNORM, HOTSEV, COLDSEV). In Experiment 2 (Exp. 2), a consumer sensory panel (n=70 panelists) evaluated acceptability of normal and WB meat from broilers processed at 45 or 63-d of age. Meat quality factors, including compression force, sarcomere length, MORS energy (MORSE), BMORS energy (BMORSE), cook loss, and peak counts of the shear curves (PC-MORS and PC-BMORS), were measured on broilers processed at 45, 63, and 70-d of age. In Exp. 1, descriptive sensory results showed that COLDSEV fillets had greater (P