Dietary lecithin improves dressing percentage and decreases chewiness in the longissimus muscle in finisher gilts.
The influence of dietary lecithin at doses of 0, 4, 20 or 80 g/kg fed to finisher gilts for six weeks prior to slaughter on growth performance, carcass quality and pork quality was investigated. M. longissimus lumborum (loin) was removed from 36 pig carcasses at 24h post-mortem for Warner-Bratzler shear force, compression, collagen content and colour analyses. Dietary lecithin increased dressing percentage (P=0.009). Pork chewiness and collagen content were decreased by dietary lecithin (P<0.05, respectively), suggesting that improved chewiness may be due to decreased collagen content. However, dietary lecithin had no effect on shear force, cohesiveness or hardness (P>0.05, respectively). Dietary lecithin reduced loin muscle L* values and increased a* values (P<0.05, respectively) but no changes on b* values (P=0.56). The data showed that dietary lecithin improved dressing percentage and resulted in less chewy and less pale pork.
['Akit|H|H|', 'Collins|C L|CL|', 'Fahri|F T|FT|', 'Hung|A T|AT|', "D'Souza|D N|DN|", 'Leury|B J|BJ|', 'Dunshea|F R|FR|']
D000821:Animal Feed D000818:Animals D003094:Collagen D003116:Color D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug D045703:Emulsifying Agents D005511:Food Handling D063427:Food Quality D054709:Lecithins D008460:Meat D018482:Muscle, Skeletal D013552:Swine D013649:Taste
Lecithin Dressing percentage Chewiness Collagen Finisher pig