Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Plants on Composition/Quality
of Food of Animal Origin
Gerhard Flachowsky*
Institute of Animal Nutrition, Friedrich-Loeffl er-Institute (FLI),
Federal Research Institute for Animal Health, Braunschweig,
Germany
body, in special organs or tissues, or in milk
and eggs, yolk and meat colour, or other
product quality measures such as tenderness,
l avour, sensory properties or other charac-
teristics of the i nal prepared food. Special
studies/measurements are necessary to
assess the inl uence of GM feed on the
composition/quality of food of animal origin
(ILSI, 2007; EFSA, 2012). Table 10.2 shows
some end points for adequate measurements
to investigate the inl uence of feed on the
composition/quality of food of animal
origin.
h e composition and quality of food of
animal origin may be inl uenced substantially
by animal feeding. Enhancing the content of
various nutrients in food of animal origin
provides an opportunity to increase
nutrition levels in the human diet -
especially those deemed to be marginal or
insui cient.
It is well known that fatty acids
(Flachowsky
et al
., 2008; Glasser
et al
., 2008;
Mirghelenj
et al
., 2009), as well some
minerals (Franke
et al
., 2009; Bennett and
Cheng, 2010; Röttger
et al
., 2012; Speight
et
al
., 2012) and vitamins (Naber and Squires,
1993; Sünder
et al
., 1999; Leeson and
Caston, 2003; Sahlin and House, 2006), are
transferred from feed into food of animal
origin (see Table 10.1). h ere are some
dif erences between ruminants and non-
ruminants because of the inl uences of the
microbiota in the rumen (fermentation
processes in the rumen, especially in the
case of unsaturated fatty acids).
Some genetically modii ed (GM) traits
could inl uence the composition and organo-
leptic quality of food of animal origin, such
as the distribution of fat and lean in the
carcass, fat grade and fatty acid composition,
mineral and vitamin concentration in the
GM Crops
First-generation GM plants are characterized
by the so-called substantial equivalence
(plants with input traits). h is means that
there are no substantial dif erences in com-
position to that of their isogenic counterparts,
apart from the introduced transgenic or
recombinant DNA fragment(s) and the newly
expressed protein(s). h erefore, the main
components of feeds from i rst-generation
transgenic plants do not inl uence the
composition and quality of food of animal
origin in comparison to its isogenic counter-
part (see also Chapters 4 and 6).
