Quality and safety of oils and fats obtained as co-products or by-products of the food chain and destined to animal production

The aim of the first part of this thesis was to evaluate the effect of trans fatty acid- (TFA), contaminant, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH)- and oxidation productenriched diets on the content of TFA and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) isomers in meat and liver of both poultry and rabbit. The enriched feedings were prepared with preselected fatty co-and by-products that contained low and high levels of TFA (low, palm fatty acid distillate; high, hydrogenated palm fatty acid distillate), environmental contaminants (dioxins and PCBs) (two different fish oils), PAH (olive oil acid oils and pomace olive oil from chemical refining, for low and high levels) and oxidation products (sunflower-olive oil blend before and after frying), so as to obtain single feedings with three enrichment degrees (high, medium and low) of the compound of interest. This experimental set-up is a part of a large, collaborative European project (http://www.ub.edu/feedfat/), where other chemical and health parameters are assessed. Lipids were extracted, methylated with diazomethane, then transmethylated with 2N KOH/methanol and analyzed by GC and silver-ion TLC-GC. TFA and CLA were determined in the fats, the feedings, meat and liver of both poultry and rabbit. In general, the level of TFA and CLA in meat and liver mainly varied according to those originally found in the feeding fats. It must be pointed out, though, that TFA and CLA accumulation was different for the two animal species, as well as for the two types of tissues. The TFA composition of meat and liver changes according to the composition of the oils added to the feeds with some differences between species. Chicken meat with skin shows higher TFA content (2.6–5.4 fold) than rabbit meat, except for the “PAH” trial. Chicken liver shows higher TFA content (1.2–2.1 fold) than rabbit liver, except for the “TRANS” and “PAH” trials. In both chicken and rabbit meats, the TFA content was higher for the “TRANS” trial, followed by the “DIOXIN” trial. Slight differences were found on the “OXIDATION” and “PAH” trends in both types of meats. In both chicken and rabbit livers, the TFA content was higher for the “TRANS” trial, followed by those of the “PAH”, “DIOXIN” and “OXIDATION” trials. This trend, however, was not identical to that of feeds, where the TFA content varied as follows: “TRANS” > “DIOXIN” >“PAH” > “OXIDATION”. In chicken and rabbit meat samples, C18:1 TFA were the most abundant, followed by C18:2 TFA and C18:3 TFA, except for the “DIOXIN” trial where C18:3 TFA > C18:2 TFA. In chicken and rabbit liver samples of the “TRANS” and “OXIDATION” trials, C18:1 TFA were the most abundant, followed by C18:2 TFA and C18:3 TFA, whereas C18:3 TFA > C18:2 in the “DIOXIN” trial. Slight differences were found on the “PAH” trend in livers from both species. The second part of the thesis dealt with the study of lipid oxidation in washed turkey muscle added with different antioxidants. The evaluation on the oxidative stability of muscle foods found that oxidation could be measured by headspace solid phase microestraction (SPME) of hexanal and propanal. To make this method effective, an antioxidant system was added to stored muscle to stop the oxidative processes. An increase in ionic strength of the sample was also implemented to increase the concentration of aldehydes in the headspace. This method was found to be more sensitive than the commonly used thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARs) method. However, after antioxidants were added and oxidation was stopped, the concentration of aldehydes decreased. It was found that the decrease in aldehyde concentration was due to the binding of the aldehydes to muscle proteins, thus decreasing the volatility and making them less detectable.

Gli assetti proprietari e di controllo nell'agroalimentare italiano

The recent default of important Italian agri-business companies provides a challenging issue to be investigated through an appropriate scientific approach. The events involving CIRIO, FERRUZZI or PARMALAT rise an important research question: what are the determinants of performance for Italian companies in the Italian agri – food sector? My aim is not to investigate all the factors that are relevant in explaining performance. Performance depends on a wide set of political, social, economic variables that are strongly interconnected and that are often very difficult to express by formal or mathematical tools. Rather, in my thesis I mainly focus on those aspects that are strictly related to the governance and ownership structure of agri – food companies representing a strand of research that has been quite neglected by previous scholars. The conceptual framework from which I move to justify the existence of a relationship between the ownership structure of a company, governance and performance is the model set up by Airoldi and Zattoni (2005). In particular the authors investigate the existence of complex relationships arising within the company and between the company and the environment that can bring different strategies and performances. They do not try to find the “best” ownership structure, rather they outline what variables are connected and how they could vary endogenously within the whole economic system. In spite of the fact that the Airoldi and Zattoni’s model highlights the existence of a relationship between ownership and structure that is crucial for the set up of the thesis the authors fail to apply quantitative analyses in order to verify the magnitude, sign and the causal direction of the impact. In order to fill this gap we start from the literature trying to investigate the determinants of performance. Even in this strand of research studies analysing the relationship between different forms of ownership and performance are still lacking. In this thesis, after a brief description of the Italian agri – food sector and after an introduction including a short explanation of the definitions of performance and ownership structure, I implement a model in which the performance level (interpreted here as Return on Investments and Return on Sales) is related to variables that have been previously identified by the literature as important such as the financial variables (cash and leverage indices), the firm location (North Italy, Centre Italy, South Italy), the power concentration (lower than 25%, between 25% and 50% and between 50% and 100% of ownership control) and the specific agri – food sector (agriculture, food and beverage). Moreover we add a categorical variable representing different forms of ownership structure (public limited company, limited liability company, cooperative) that is the core of our study. All those variables are fully analysed by a preliminary descriptive analysis. As in many previous contributions we apply a panel least squares analysis for 199 Italian firms in the period 1998 – 2007 with data taken from the Bureau Van Dijck Dataset. We apply two different models in which the dependant variables are respectively the Return on Investments (ROI) and the Return on Sales (ROS) indicators. Not surprisingly we find that companies located in the North Italy representing the richest area in Italy perform better than the ones located in the Centre and South of Italy. In contrast with the Modigliani - Miller theorem financial variables could be significant and the specific sector within the agri – food market could play a relevant role. As the power concentration, we find that a strong property control (higher than 50%) or a fragmented concentration (lower than 25%) perform better. This result apparently could suggest that “hybrid” forms of concentrations could create bad functioning in the decision process. As our key variables representing the ownership structure we find that public limited companies and limited liability companies perform better than cooperatives. This is easily explainable by the fact that law establishes that cooperatives are less profit – oriented. Beyond cooperatives public limited companies perform better than limited liability companies and show a more stable path over time. Results are quite consistent when we consider both ROI and ROS as dependant variables. These results should not lead us to claim that public limited company is the “best” among all possible governance structures. First, every governance solution should be considered according to specific situations. Second more robustness analyses are needed to confirm our results. At this stage we deem these findings, the model set up and our approach represent original contributions that could stimulate fruitful future studies aimed at investigating the intriguing issue concerning the effect of ownership structure on the performance levels.

Verso il consumo sostenibile: i prodotti biologici nelle abitudini alimentari degli italiani

Scegliere di consumare in modo sostenibile significa passare ad un nuovo modello di consumo. Tale modello richiede una maggiore consapevolezza e responsabilità da parte dei consumatori, unite all'adozione di nuovi stili di vita e di scelte d’acquisto, che permettano il raggiungimento di elevati livelli di benessere nel rispetto dell'ambiente. Un notevole sforzo è stato compiuto recentemente dai policy maker per incoraggiare il consumo sostenibile quali implementazioni dello sviluppo sostenibile. Ancora lunga, tuttavia, è la strada da percorrere per raggiungere pienamente questo obiettivo. Tra i prodotti sostenibili, il biologico si è rivelato di gran lunga il più rappresentativo: le statistiche di questo mercato mostrano, infatti, tendenze positive, sebbene il consumo risulti ancora eterogeneo e contenuto rispetto al consumo di alimenti convenzionali. Ciò mostra che il comportamento dei consumatori non è ancora abbastanza reattivo alle suddette politiche. Il presente studio si propone di contribuire alla ricerca sul consumo sostenibile approfondendo i fattori che incoraggiano o impediscono il consumo di prodotti alimentari biologici in Italia. Adottando un nuovo approccio si cerca di capire come i diversi segmenti di diete alimentari affrontino gli alimenti biologici in termini di consumi e di atteggiamenti. Un'analisi multivariata a più fasi è stata condotta su un campione di 3.004 consumatori. Un’analisi delle componenti principali non lineare è stata applicata alle variabili ordinali che misurano il consumo di ventuno categorie di alimenti. Successivamente è stata applicata la cluster analysis che ha dato luogo a quattro segmenti di abitudini alimentari. I prodotti biologici sono diventati parte delle abitudini alimentari in Italia in quasi un terzo della popolazione. Il consumo sembra essersi affermato soprattutto nel segmento con abitudini alimentari sane. Una scarsa attenzione ad una dieta sana, gli stili di vita, il reddito, l'accessibilità, la mancanza di consapevolezza condizionano le abitudini alimentari a scapito di un consumo più sostenibile.

Gut microbiota perturbation induced by emerging dietary habits: an in vitro colon model to predict their effects by a microbiomic and metabolomic approach

Over the past 30 years, unhealthy diets and lifestyles have increased the incidence of noncommunicable diseases and are culprits of diffusion on world’s population of syndromes as obesity or other metabolic disorders, reaching pandemic proportions. In order to comply with such scenario, the food industry has tackled these challenges with different approaches, as the reformulation of foods, fortification of foods, substitution of ingredients and supplements with healthier ingredients, reduced animal protein, reduced fats and improved fibres applications. Although the technological quality of these emerging food products is known, the impact they have on the gut microbiota of consumers remains unclear. In the present PhD thesis, the recipient work was conducted to study different foods with the substitution of the industrial and market components to that of novel green oriented and sustainable ingredients. So far, this thesis included eight representative case studies of the most common substitutions/additions/fortifications in dairy, meat, and vegetable products. The products studied were: (i) a set of breads fortified with polyphenol-rich olive fiber, to replace synthetic antioxidant and preservatives, (ii) a set of Gluten-free breads fortified with algae powder, to fortify the protein content of standard GF products, (iii) different formulations of salami where nitrates were replaced by ascorbic acid and vegetal extract antioxidants and nitrate-reducers starter cultures, (iv) chocolate fiber plus D-Limonene food supplement, as a novel prebiotic formula, (v) hemp seed bran and its alkalase hydrolysate, to introduce as a supplement, (vi) milk with and without lactose, to evaluate the different impact on human colonic microbiota of healthy or lactose-intolerants, (vii) lactose-free whey fermented and/or with probiotics added, to be introduced as an alternative beverage, exploring its impact on human colonic microbiota from healthy or lactose-intolerants, and (viii) antibiotics, to assess whether maternal amoxicillin affects the colon microbiota of piglets.