[Hepatic retinol as a nutritional marker of the bovine diet]

For their breeding bovines are made to spend their life in pastures and in stables. As a consequence, diets are different when compared with the goal of production: either meat or milk. It would be useful to evaluate the end result of the diet by comparing it with a nutritional marker which should be identifiable at the moment of slaughter. Hepatic retinol could be used because it is possible to compare the results of prior determinations, where beta-caroten was the only provitamin A, to present determinations where retinol itself is directly added. These determinations would provide useful information about the animal and through their generalization a significant control which could guarantee for the consumer the quality of the liver itself or of the liver prepared with other ingredients. An improvement of the quality of the health of the animal and of the consumer could result from the use of this accessible and accurate control.