Some Physical and Physiological Factors Affecting Poultry Bruises ,

BRUISED tissue is condemned by the Federal Poultry Inspectors and hence must be excised resulting in lower yield and reduced return. Ringrose (1953) and Kaiser and Smith (1958) reported that bruising is one of the major causes of downgrading of broilers. Hamdy et al. (1961) found that 90% of these bruises were inflicted between zero and 13 hours before slaughtering the birds indicating that most of these damaged areas are contused during catching, loading, unloading and hanging on the processing lines. It has been estimated that the loss and damage to the commercial broiler industry, due to bruising, may exceed two million dollars annually in the State of Georgia alone, yet limited reports are available concerning the morphological, pathological and biochemical changes occurring in poultry bruises. Hamdy et al. (1957c) observed that the time required for the gross changes to occur in livestock bruises was subject to variation and that…