Classical Laboratory Techniques to Distinguish Broiler Chicken Meat from Slaughtered and Dead Birds for Effective Detection of Meat Adulteration

To achieve unscrupulous economic gain, some chicken meat retailers use dead broiler chickens to replace the meat from properly slaughtered birds, which may lead to severe health consequences for the chicken meat consumers. This study was undertaken to differentiate the quality attributes of chicken from dead and slaughtered broiler birds to judge the substitution. Therefore, slaughtered, dead, and a mix of the both samples were comparatively evaluated for different quality parameters. Results showed a significant difference (p < 0.05) in water holding capacity, extract release volume, drip loss, total pigments, myoglobin content, thiobarbituric acid reactive substance, total volatile basic nitrogen, myoglobin content, and L-lactate among the chicken meat samples. The malachite green test could efficiently differentiate the slaughtered, dead, and mix samples based on the available residual blood in them. The color parameters (redness, chroma) and histopathological parameters could also differentiate slaughtered, dead, and admixture samples. The sensory scores were higher for the dead than for both slaughtered and mix samples. Higher microbial counts were (p < 0.05) observed in dead samples as compared to others. On the basis of the findings, we could conclude that the physicochemical, histopathological, microbiological evaluation, and malachite green test could efficiently differentiate the slaughtered, dead, and mix chicken samples.