Effect of Different Vitamin D Supplementations in Poultry Feed on Vitamin D Content of Eggs and Chicken Meat

摘要

According to a new European Union regulation, vitamin D3 can be partially or totally substituted with 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 (25-OH-D3) in hens' feed. The purpose of this study was to clarify how this regulation has affected the vitamin D content of commercial eggs and chicken meat. Another aim was to investigate how effectively 25-OH-D3 is transferred from the hens' diet to egg yolk by analyzing eggs from farms using known commercial feeds and by conducting an animal study. Vitamin D determinations were made by HPLC methods. The vitamin D3 contents of two commercial egg yolk pools were 4.9 ± 0.14 and 4.0 ± 0.10 μg/100 g, and the 25-OH-D3 contents were 1.3 ± 0.19 and 1.0 ± 0.07 μg/100 g. The chicken meat pools contained 0.2-0.3 μg of vitamin D3/100 g, whereas the content of 25-OH-D3 was ≤0.2 μg/100 g. These results are comparable to earlier data. The animal and farm studies showed that 25-OH-D3 was effectively transferred from the hens' diet to yolk. However, because the relative activity between 25-OH-D3 and vitamin D3 is unknown, it remains questionable whether the use of 25-OH-D3 in hens' feed is beneficial to human vitamin D intake from eggs.