ABSTRACT
The nature and form of poultry meat consumption has changed considerably over the last 40 years. There has been a significant increase in the consumption of poultry meat products that are easily purchased and/or prepared (Barbut, 2012), and as such, these types of products are often referred as ‘convenience foods’ (Petracci and Cavani, 2012). The market demands for increased poultry meat have been largely met through genetic selection for achieving growth rate and improved protein accretion, particularly with respect to the breast muscle or white meat portions of the carcass (Havenstein et al., 2003a,b; Gaya et al., 2012). The article by Cruikshank et al. (1934) is often cited as one of the first reports establishing the link between dietary intake and yolk/lipid depot fatty acid profiles and this was later shown to be particularly true for unsaturated fatty acids (Naber, 1979). The growing awareness of the cardiovascular benefits of omega-3 fatty acids (Leaf and Weber, 1988; Barlow et al., 1990) and the potential for manipulating essential fatty acid profiles with fish oil were already shown to be feasible in earlier studies to this effect (Murty and Reiser, 1961, Navarro et al., 1972). Hargis et al. (1991) subsequently showed that total n3 enrichment with fish oil was accompanied by parallel increases in the longer chain n3 fatty acids eicosapentaenoic (EPA) and docosahexaenoic (DHA), which was not the case for n3 enrichment of poultry tissues from plant source oils (Phettaplace and Watkins, 1989).
