Nutritional factors affecting abdominal fat deposition in poultry: A review

Abstract

The major goals of the poultry industry are to increase the carcass yield and to reduce carcass fatness, mainly the abdominal fat pad. The increase in poultry meat consumption has guided the selection process toward fast-growing broilers with a reduced feed conversion ratio. Intensive selection has led to great improvements in economic traits such as body weight gain, feed efficiency, and breast yield to meet the demands of consumers, but modern commercial chickens exhibit excessive fat accumulation in the abdomen area. However, dietary composition and feeding strategies may offer practical and efficient solutions for reducing body fat deposition in modern poultry strains. Thus, the regulation of lipid metabolism to reduce the abdominal fat content based on dietary composition and feeding strategy, as well as elucidating their effects on the key enzymes associated with lipid metabolism, could facilitate the production of lean meat and help to understand the fat-lowering effects of diet and different feeding strategies. © 2014 by Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences.