A study of the quality and biological value of meat of different breeds of rabbit bred in Georgia

The use of a rabbit meat is a perspective and accessible way of solving the problem of the shortage of domestic meat products in Georgia. Nowadays, there are sufficient on rabbit breeding in the country, but no data are available on the quality and technological properties of rabbit meat. Therefore, of scientific and practical interest is to study the quality indicators, safety, chemical composition and biological value of meat of different breeds of rabbits. The modern, standard, commonly accepted methods of the research have been used in performing this work, which are suitable for accomplishing the set tasks. Statistical processing of the results obtained and the evaluation of the reliability of the obtained data were carried out by the mathematical statistics methods using the Windows IBM SPSS Statistics software program. Based on the study of microbiological indicators of rabbit meat, it has been demonstrated that the number of mesophylic-aerobic and facultative anaerobic microorganisms does not exceed the values established by the sanitary standards and rules, no bacteria of intestinal bacillus and pathogenic microorganisms were detected, including salmonella, which is also is in compliance with the biological and hygienic safety requirements and standards. The safety of rabbit meat is also indicated by a study of its toxicity. It has been established that the breeds of rabbit bred in the country are distinguished by a high meat productivity, high protein and moderate fat contents and low caloric capacity. The biological value of rabbit meat has been determined: it is distinguished by the number of all essential amino acids and the protein-quality index, it does not have limited amino acids, and all essential amino acids scores, especially of lysine, tryptophan and leucine, exceed the "ideal protein" score. The level of satisfaction of human daily needs is also high with amino acids. The resulting data point to the high quality and biological value of the meat of rabbits bred in Georgia, and made it reasonable to use as raw material for domestic high-quality meat production.