UC Davis

Chitosan is a compound that is shown to have numerous health benefit on chickens. It is shown to decrease heat stress, reduce pathogen load, and is also shown to have anti-inflammatory actions. More specific to the case of white striping, chitosan can also prevent sterol emulsification, which can help inhibit fat absorption, and is thought to be able to help with decreasing fat deposition. In this study, chitosan was used as a feed additive to mitigate the effects of white striping in broilers. We hypothesized that broilers fed chitosan would have improved meat quality and reduced incidence of white striping dose dependently. In this study, three groups of 42 broilers were fed different diets: conventional corn and soybean meal diet with no chitosan, 0.2% chitosan, and 0.4% chitosan added in the grower and finisher phases. There were 7 birds per cage and 6 cages per treatment, and were euthanized after 6 weeks of growth. To test our hypotheses, we examined weight progression, drip loss, cook loss, white striping scores, gross pathology, histopathology, and gene expression to discern the effects of chitosan on white striping. Overall, there were no significant difference in growth, showing how chitosan supplementation does not compromise growth. The 0.4% chitosan group showed the best results from chitosan supplementation with less cook loss and reduction in white striping incidence. There were unexpected results observed where the 0.2% chitosan group had a lower white striping incidence compared to the control group, but showed more expression of potential foam cell marker CD36 and fat deposition marker PPARG. There were no statistical differences found with the other gene markers. Overall, chitosan supplementation improved meat quality and reduced white striping incidence, particularly at a 0.4% concentration. Chitosan supplementation has been adopted in poultry feed due to its broad benefits in broiler performance and health. Thus, further studies should be performed to further understand the mechanisms by which of chitosan mitigate the pathophysiology of white striping by regulating fat deposition in breast muscle.