Preparation and Analysis of Polar Hawthorn Berry Extracts, Industrial Application in Poultry Processing

For years, it is an actuality in the poultry processing industry, that the body and the cardiovascular system of the chickens are not strong enough due to the shortened rearing time. This induces, that the quality of the chicken breast is not appropriate for selling, since during the processing procedure, frequently blood spots appear inside the meat. These damaged parts need to be removed, causing huge economic loss. In this paper a solution for this problem is searched using hawthorn, a traditional herb, with well-known beneficial effects to the cardiovascular system. Improvement of the product quality and the reducing amount of the removed meat are supposed by applying a treatment with a polyphenol-rich drinking tincture made from the plant. Beside the preparation of the drinking liquid, including pretreatment, extraction and dilution steps, chemical analysis of the phenolic compounds is also conducted. The result of the drinking test shows that the extent of the blood spots, and thus the quantity of the "cut off" meat decreased significantly, however the reduction of the meat weight and a slight change in the death rate are also needed to take into consideration. It has been found, that the total phenolic contents of the berry are similar to literature data, while they show moderate antioxidant efficiency. Several phenolic acids, procyanidins and flavonoids were identified as the main phenol compounds of the applied extract.