Vitamin E supplementation and meat quality in lambs

Abstract

Colour deterioration and lipid oxidation are major factors limiting the shelf life and acceptability of meat. Vitamin E slows down these processes and meat from animals fed supranutritional amounts of vitamin E has an increased shelf life. However, vitamin E supplementation in sheep has produced variable results (Enser et al. , 1999). This work shows the effects of supplementing vitamin E on the concentration in plasma over a 63 day feeding period and on meat quality.