Genetic changes could help measure chicken stress

Researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden have developed a minimally-invasive tool that could help poultry farmers measure changes in the genome to detect the symptoms of long-term chronic stress in commercially-raised chickens.

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Monika Wisniewska | Dreamstime.com
Monika Wisniewska | Dreamstime.com

Researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden have developed a minimally-invasive tool that could help poultry farmers measure changes in the genome to detect the symptoms of long-term chronic stress in commercially-raised chickens, improving welfare and the quality of meat produced.

“It’s a new tool that could be used within the poultry industry, but not only by the poultry industry. It can be used by regulatory agencies, certification brands or by large producers that want to ensure that small producers are being faithful to their practices,” explained Carlos Guerrero-Bosagna, a researcher in environmental toxicology at Uppsala University.

The research was recently published in the journal Frontiers in Genetics.

Challenges to measuring stress

Currently, visual evaluation or some early robotic prototypes are used to measure welfare on the farm, but it is very difficult to detect the effects of long-term exposure to stress.

“Just the process of collecting blood from a chicken can induce stress in the bird. That results in the release of a short-term hormone that can overwhelm any long-term effects that I want to detect,” Guerrero-Bosagna said.

A new tool

The researchers studied two groups of male White Leghorn chickens. One group was raised in a normal commercial environment, while the other group was exposed to stressors including isolation and limited access to food and water.

The experiment was performed in both Sweden and Brazil.

At the conclusion, the researchers analyzed blood samples from both groups, looking for changes in the epigenome.

“The epigenome relates to chemical modifications to the DNA. It doesn’t change the DNA sequence, rather it refers to chemical changes on top of the DNA. These chemical modifications accumulate throughout life,” Guerrero-Bosagna said.

The researchers saw drastic changes between the epigenomes of the control chickens and the stressed birds.

“We plan to take this set of genes and try to select which one of these genomes survive in stressful conditions,” Guerrero-Bosagna concluded. “Our final plan is to develop a panel of genes that indicate stress across the board.”

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