Effects of a 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 (404 kg) 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 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.