The issue of white stripes (also white striping) that can be found in some chicken breasts on the market, is fuelling widespread stances of activists and ill-informed people who do not miss an opportunity to take advantage of any aspect found in farming or on animals, to attack poultry production, which is one of the production excellence in the food sector, which produces in compliance with European laws, employs tens of thousands of people and, above all, manages to satisfy, at prices accessible to all, the nutritional needs of all social strata of the population, especially the economically weaker one (which, unfortunately, has been growing steadily for at least two decades).
This habit of launching out-of-control rants or comments, often highly debatable, without scientific basis and based on extremist ideologies, has long generated perplexity and fear in consumers who understandably assume attitudes of ‘food caution’ that are more emotionally induced than rationally motivated.
We at M.A.C. constantly try to intercept the causes of consumers’ fears, offering them information based on real facts and scientific arguments, provided by researchers, health authority officials and veterinary experts in the sector, whom we always protect by avoiding revealing their names for reasons, we hope obvious, of safeguarding the peace of mind of our sources.
We have therefore collected the most relevant observations from them, summarised them and offer them to you below:
The white stripes on the surface of the chicken breast muscle can vary in quantity and thickness and may even be absent.
When they are there, it is fatty tissue that is deposited between the bundles of muscle fibres during the normal muscle growth and development of the animal.
They can be found in all commercial chicken breeds, including those with slower growth and in organic production.
There is no scientific evidence that white stripes are associated with pathological conditions or diseases and their presence poses no risk to human health.
There is no evidence that they adversely affect the welfare of farmed animals, which exhibit normal behaviour, show no symptoms of ill health or disease and have growth and biological performance that are completely normal.
Animals destined for the human food chain cannot (by law and common sense) be affected by any disease. If, however, it happens that an animal suffering from a disease reaches authorised and controlled slaughterhouses by mistake, it is excluded directly by the Health Authorities, which by law are always present in slaughterhouses throughout Europe.
The Health Authorities in charge of controlling farms and slaughterhouses, in fact, constantly monitor through audits, inspections and frequent sampling, to ensure that the productions destined for human consumption, respect the quality, organoleptic and sanitary level that legislators require for European consumers.
European food quality standards are the highest in the world, which is why any third country wishing to export food products to the European Union must raise the quality level of its production and adopt a sort of production double standard in its own territory.
One of the pillars on which the European strategy on food quality ‘from farm to fork’ is based, is the protection of the health and welfare of farm animals through the prevention of diseases and, as a direct consequence, the protection of consumer health.
We know that white stripes appear in only a part of the animal population: this observation is of fundamental importance, because it allows genetic selection programmes to be set up on these factors, which, in a completely natural way, make it possible to separate from the pedigree population those animals that show them and to subsequently breed only birds that do not have this defect.
In the specific case of white stripes, the selection process has already begun and the first data are emerging on the reduction of the incidence of white stripes on the breasts of bred chickens. It will only take a few more years of work to achieve their complete disappearance, or reduction to minimal levels.
It is important that consumers are able to inform themselves and understand the basics of natural selection methods, which are those that make it possible to identify, within animal populations, only those that manifest the many positive characteristics that will make the next generations grow up with the best growth, health, robustness, correct gait, high cardiopulmonary capacity, absence of white stripes, etc.
It is important above all because, by having the opportunity to know these details -objectively little known to most- consumers can realise how false and distorted by extremist ideologies are the statements of animal welfare associations that describe fast-growing chickens as ‘sick and deformed, unable to keep their balance due to the enormous weight of their breasts’.
It is also important to realise that, contrary to what activists claim, high productivity is positively associated with health, welfare, absence of injuries in animals, and high sustainability in poultry farming, because regular professional farm management minimises raw material waste, carbon and water footprints.
Only these positive characteristics, which are present in all regular poultry farms, make it possible to sustainably grow highly selected birds worldwide that can provide food of high biological value that is also accessible to people in less developed countries.
The welfare of farmed animals is important and is intimately linked to their health, as are the ethical values (implicit in the aim of making healthy, safe and affordable food accessible worldwide) that must be part of holistic evaluations (i.e. concerning each organism or system in its entirety and not just as composed of individual parts) of the reality of intensive farming and the breeding of fast-growing breeds.
The editorial staff of M.A.C.
