Caracterização da carcaça de frangos comercializados como caipira, semicaipira e industrial

Abstract

The subclassification “semicaipira” is not officially regulated for broiler chicken, although it is used in some regions, which may make it difficult for the consumer to differentiate between them and traditional broilers. The aim of this study was to characterize the carcass of broilers classified as caipira, semicaipira and industrial slaughtered and marketed by an slaughterhouse located in the Triângulo Mineiro, Minas Gerais, Brasil. For this, 361 broiler chickens from the three types were used in this study. The traits evaluated to discriminate broiler chicken types were live, carcass, breast, drumstick, thigh, gizzard, heart and liver weights, as well as measurements of height and length of the chest and one of the drumsticks and the thighs (randomly chosen) and width of the chest and drumstick. Significant differences were identified due to the type of bird and slaughter batch for all the analyzed traits through the PROC GLM procedure of the statistical package SAS. The stepwise discriminant analysis was performed by the IBM SPSS software, considering the Wilks lambda method and adopting a significance level of 5%. Based on the discriminant functions, 11 traits were identified as being significant for the differentiation of chicken types, being live, breast, gizzard, liver, carcass, drumstick and thigh weights, breast and drumstick widths and lengths of the chest and drumstick. Significant differences in carcasses, cuts and giblets among the three types of evaluated birds were observed. The chickens classified as caipira seem to belong to a group very different from the industrial type. The semicaipira chickens presented intermediate traits to the other two types, been more similar to the industrial type.