As part of the INTAQT project, the LIVING LAB activity has been conceived as a practical and collaborative approach aimed at evaluating the welfare and meat quality of slow-growing chicken farmed in a free-range system.

It is well known that access to outdoor area in free-range farming systems improves consumer perception of animal welfare and allows to obtain meat with specific quality traits. In addition, chickens reared with pasture presence in outdoor area expressed more movement and foraging behavior if compared to those reared in grass-free outdoor systems.

In Italy, the free-range rearing systems are characterized by outdoor areas that should be covered by grass. However, to date, this last aspect is not mandatory by the EU legislation in force.

More in detail, the Italian chicken Living Lab activity focused on evaluating the effects of the diet enriched in antioxidant components (i.e. tocopherols and selenium) and extruded linseed as well as the use of the outdoor area covered by grass with or without trees presence on the quality traits and shelf-life of thigh meat belonging to slow-growing broilers.

This activity has been carried out as a collaboration among three INTAQT partners, namely University of Bologna, University of Perugia, and Amadori group.

The work focused on evaluating the main technological characteristics such as pH, color, and water holding capacity, as well as lipid and protein oxidation.

Overall, the results showed that the main meat quality traits such as pH, color and water holding capacity were not affected by both the enrichment of diet and outdoor area.

Differently, an interesting result is that thigh meat coming from chickens reared in outdoor area with trees was characterized by a higher yellowness. Also, as expected, the combination the experimental diet with the enriched outdoor area negatively affected the lipid meat oxidative status. Moreover, the results obtained in this study confirm that grazing is compatible with obtaining high-quality meat, whose nutritional profile can be improved with supplementation with n-3 PUFAs. However, in free-range farming, it is important to prevent the potential negative effects of increased oxidative stress associated with greater animal movement.

This can be achieved by adding tocopherols and selenium to the feed, which can prevent greater lipid oxidation in the meat, especially where greater animal movement is encouraged through the presence of grazing and wooded areas, along with an enrichment of the diet with n-3 PUFAs.

Thus, further investigations dealing with lipidomic approach can be considered suitable to deepen the knowledge concerning this aspect.