Growth Performance and Meat Attributes of Poultry in Response to Dietary Probiotic Supplementation: A Review
Growth Performance and Meat Attributes of Poultry in Response to Dietary Probiotic Supplementation: A Review
Teedzai Chitura*
ABSTRACT
The emergence of drug-resistant microorganisms threatens human and animal health. The inappropriate use of prescribed antibiotics as growth promoters in livestock production is the main contributor of antimicrobial resistance. As a result, there have been growing calls by consumers and international health organizations for reduced application of antibiotic growth promoters in livestock production. To address this problem, several animal feed commissioners and summits have legislated and banned the use of antibiotic growth promoters in livestock feeds. Given these scenarios, animal nutritionists embarked on the quest for the search of alternative and sustainable growth promoters, as a replacement for antibiotics. The application of probiotics in poultry production appears to be an economically feasible alternative. Hence, the present review aims to provide comprehensive information regarding the use of probiotics as a management tool for improving poultry performance while ensuring the production of safe meat and other poultry products. It was hypothesized that probiotic supplementation can successfully replace the use of antibiotics as growth promoters in poultry diets without causing adverse effects on growth performance and products quality. A literature search was conducted to cover the scope of growth performance and meat attributes of poultry species fed diets supplemented with probiotics. The search process was conducted with the use of electronic databases such as Science Direct, Google scholar, JURN, Directory of Open Access Journals, and Research gate. The keywords were “antibiotics’, “growth performance”, “meat quality”, “poultry”, and “probiotics”.The objective of this review study was to provide a comprehensive understanding of the application of probiotics in poultry production as antibiotic alternatives for improving the growth performance of birds . Overall, results have shown that incorporating probiotics in poultry diets or drinking water improves productivity without adversely affecting the quality and sensory attributes of poultry meat.
Keywords | Food safety, Growth performance, Poultry, Probiotics, Sensory attributes
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May 2024
Vol. 12, Iss. 5, pp. 802-993
