Validação de uma metodologia para avaliação de problemas locomotores em aves de corte

Abstract

Brazil is the largest exporter and third largest producer of poultry meat, with 11.42 million tons in 2010 and 12.86 million tons in 2011. With this relation to the production and export of turkey meat in 2011, exports totaling 141,200 tons, with reduction of 10.5% when compared with the previous year. The market for products made from turkey meat has been shown very promising not only in Brazil and in several other countries, accounting 6.9% of global production. Allied with development of animal production, especially in recent years, animal welfare has been a subject of discussion and research, being among the most discussed subjects currently in production animal. There is growing certainty of consumers that animals used for food production should to be treated well. The locomotor problems hinder the fowl from moving freely and with it accessing the equipment necessary for their survival: feeders and drinkers. About 10-40% of gross profit per lot is lost due to locomotor problems in birds, of which can be completely or partly condemned carcass the slaughterhouse. There are different ways of evaluating the locomotor problems in broiler chickens. In the field, the methodologies used to evaluate locomotor problems are visual examinations of walking ability of the birds, called Gait Score (evaluation of walking). Meanwhile these methods are considered subjective because does not use any equipment and, yeah, worksheets that guide the user to observe the bird behavior with a ruler or measuring the size of the lesions. This means that depending the evaluator and their interpretation a score of injuries will be concluded. In this way, the purpose of this work is to validate a new technology for measurement of locomotors problems in broiler chickens (chickens and turkeys) that be objective, with easily managed and confidante, independent the evaluator and with universal use. To this the new technology was developed and evaluated in comparison with six methodologies to measure locomotors problems, previously established by extensive citations in the literature, look for adjust it and validate it.