Slaughter yield and meat quality of chicken at different length of preslaughter feed withdrawal

In the European Community, per-head consumption of chicken meat is steadily rising. Many consumers attempt eating more healthy products (BICKEL and WETSCHEREK, 2005) and that is why chicken meat with its low fat content is often preferred to beef or pig meat. Also events like the BSE-crisis or abuse of antibiotics in pig production, which are very present in the media, might lead the customers towards chicken meat. Nowadays quality is a major concern for most of the consumers, especially when buying foods. The most important factor in chicken meat quality is prevention from microbial contamination. Feed withdrawal before slaughter is a known procedure to lower the risk of contamination with faeces prior to slaughter, and the emptied intestinal tract also decreases the incidence of contamination of meat during dissection. Thus, feed withdrawal before slaughter in broiler production is a matter of recent research (e.g. SENGOR et al., 2006; KIM et al. 2007). Feed withdrawal prior to slaughter is also often caused by long transport times from the producer to the slaughterhouse. A further side effect of starving before slaughter is reducing the amount of waste material, which lowers disposal costs.