The effect of feeding stearidonic acid enriched soy oil to broilers on the fatty acid composition and sensory characteristics of chicken meal.

Abstract

Introduction Enriching chicken meat with long chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC n-3 PUFA) is a viable means of increasing population intakes (minimum recommended 450 mg/d, SACN, 2004) of these essential fatty acids. Feeding broilers fish oil to achieve this causes problems with taint in the meat, whereas feeding an oil rich in C18:3 n-3 (LNA) does not result in the deposition of LC n-3 PUFA (Rymer and Givens, 2006). Stearidonic acid (C18:4n-3) is further down the conversion pathway of LNA to LC n-3 PUFA and appears to be converted much more efficiently by humans to LC n-3 PUFA than LNA (James et al., 2003). Feeding birds an oil rich in C18:4n-3 may therefore result in more enrichment of poultry meat with n-3 PUFA other than LNA, without the taint associated with feeding fish oil. The objective of this experiment was to determine what the effects on meat fatty acid composition and sensory characteristics were when broilers were fed an oil (SDA) derived from soyabean genetically modified to produce high concentrations of C18:4 n-3.