Effects of dietary vitamin E supplementation on performance and meat characteristics in fattening bulls from the Belgian Blue breed

An experiment was conducted to study effects of dietary vitamin E supplementation on animal performance, slaughter characteristics and meat quality traits in Belgian Blue double-muscled bulls. Two groups of six bulls each were offered (close to ad libitum) a fattening diet based on sugar beet pulp for 154 days, at which time they were slaughtered. The diet given to the control group (CG) contained 12.5 mg vitamin E/kg concentrate. The vitamin E-treated group (VG) received the same concentrate plus a supplement of 1000 mg vitamin E per bull daily. Steaks from m. longissimus thoracis were used to determine meat quality characteristics, alpha tocopherol concentration and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances content (TBARS), an indicator of oxidation rancidity. Supplementation had no influence on animal performance or carcass characteristics. The main findings were that vitamin E doubled the muscle alpha tocopherol level (1.9 vs. 0.9 mg/kg; P , 0.001), lipid oxidation was suppressed as indicated by TBARS values (P , 0.01 at days 7, 9, 11 and 14 after slaughter), but muscle colour was not significantly affected although a* (redness) tended to be higher for VG.  2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.