Oxidative stability and sensory quality of meat from broiler chickens fed a bacterial meal produced on natural gas.

Bacterial meal (BPM) produced from bacteria grown on natural gas is a feed source containing approximately 70% CP and 10% lipids with predominantly C16:0 and C16:1 fatty acids. The effect of increasing dietary levels (0, 40, 80, or 120 g/kg) of BPM on fatty acid composition, the profile of volatiles by dynamic headspace gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, and sensory quality of frozen-stored broiler chicken thigh meat was examined. Increasing levels of BPM increased (linear, P < 0.0001) the content of saturated fatty acids, tended (linear, P = 0.05) to increase the content of monounsaturated fatty acids, and tended (linear, P = 0.08) to decrease the content of polyunsaturated fatty acids in the meat. Feeding BPM reduced (linear, P ≤ 0.03) levels of the volatile lipid oxidation products butanal, hexanal, heptanal, and nonanal in the meat during frozen storage but had no significant effects on the sensory quality parameters related to odor and flavor. The presence of antioxidants in BPM may have reduced lipid oxidation in the meat. To conclude, adding BPM to diets reduced the formation of volatile lipid oxidation products during frozen storage of the broiler thigh meat. Dynamic headspace gas chromatography-mass spectrometry was a more sensitive method in detecting early lipid oxidation compared with TBA reactive substances and sensory quality analyses in broiler thigh meat.