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In recent years, CLA has been reported to have a wide range of biologically beneficial effects, including anticarcinogenic, antiobesity, antiatherogenic and immunomodulatory functions, and lean body mass promotion. Food products derived from ruminants are the richest natural sources of CLA. Researchers have demonstrated that dietary alterations of both ruminant and non-ruminant animals could increase the unsaturated fatty acid and CLA levels of meat, thereby improve its potential health benefits. Thus, feeding pigs with CLA has been suggested as a potential strategy for obtaining meat products enriched with CLA. Thus, the present study was therefore designed to evaluate the influence of dietary levels of CLA supplementation on growth rate, carcass characteristics and fatty acid profiles in skeletal muscle and subcutaneous fat, and to determinate the optimum dietary CLA dose for growing-finishing pigs from 39.5 to 108.0 kg. Forty-eight pigs were randomly allotted to four diets containing 0 (control), 0.5, 1.0 or 1.5% of CLA mixture (35.2% cis-9, trans-11 and 37.5% trans-10, cis-12) for 12 weeks.
The results showed that dietary CLA supplementation did not affect the animal’s growth performance and carcass characteristics, whereas significantly increased dry matter content of the Longissimus dorsi muscle (P < 0.05). Furthermore, dietary CLA supplementation modified the fatty acid profiles in both the Longissimus dorsi muscle and backfat by increasing the concentrations of saturated fatty acids and decreasing the concentrations of unsaturated fatty acids (P < 0.05), so the ratio of saturated fatty acids to unsaturated fatty acids increased. The CLA concentrations in the Longissimus dorsi muscle and backfat were increased linearly by the CLA supplementation in a dose-dependent manner. However, CLA cis-9, trans-11 and CLA trans-10, cis-12 showed different deposition efficiencies in pigs.
Further studies should be undertaken to define the deposition mechanism of CLA isomers in pig tissues, and to determine the optimum CLA concentration in feed and time of feeding to achieve high CLA concentration in pig meat in a more economic way.
XF Han, FJ Feng, JP Yu, SX Tang, MA Bamikole, ZL Tan, B Zeng, CS Zhou and M Wang, 2011. Journal of Animal and Feed Sciences, 20: 171-185.