Kontext

The poultry industry has made great strides in breeding animals faster and more efficiently thanks to intensive and successful selection programmes, together with obtaining better knowledge of nutritional and environmental needs and developing the most appropriate feeding and management techniques for these animals.
However, the incidence of meat myopathies and lesions in chicken has increased considerably over the last decade, being closely related to fast-growing animals with high meat yields. The three myopathies that have biggest economic impact today are white striping, wooden breast and spaghetti meat. These mainly affect the breast, which is the most valued part of the chicken, particularly in Western markets. This makes meat with myopathies unsuitable for the cuts market and the production of certain meat products, so it has to be sent to produce trimmings, minced meat or other lower value products.
In this context, the poultry sector is carrying out an intense search for solutions to reduce and/or eliminate the presence of chicken myopathies and defects. Short-term actions involve modifying diets and management techniques. A number of producers are currently detecting and classifying these defects by visual and manual inspection, where a trained operator observes and touches the chicken or removed breasts. This is a slow, subjective and cost-intensive procedure. 
This project aims to address both aspects of this problem in the industry by defining non-invasive technologies for detecting and quantifying defects in chicken meat and assessing multidisciplinary strategies to reduce their incidence.