Technical Abstract: The functional and physical properties of intact and ground meat were determined during four replicate trials on a total of 180 pale (L* > 53) and normal (46 < L* < 53) boneless, skinless breast fillets collected from two commercial processing plants. At 24h post-mortem, lightness (L*), redness (a*), yellowness (b*), and pH were determined on each fillet. The left fillet from each breast was ground and used to determine cook loss (CL) and Allo-Kramer shear (AK) on meat patties as well as moisture uptake (MU) and CL on meat slurries before and after adjustment to the pale meat pH of 5.9. The right fillet from each breast was kept intact and used to determine expressible moisture (EM), CL, and AK on the intact meat. Compared to normal fillets, pale fillets exhibited significantly higher L* values, lower ultimate pH (5.67 vs 5.94), higher AK (3.5 vs 2.9 kg/g), higher EM, lower MU, and higher CL measured on the intact fillets, ground meat patties, and meat slurries. Adjusting the pH of the pale meat slurries to normal meat pH (5.9), resulted in a higher MU (11.05 vs 3.69 %), indicating a partial restoration of protein functionality. These results indicate that wide differences in raw broiler breast meat color, mainly due to differences in the muscle pH, are related to important variations in the water holding and binding capacity of the meat. The effect of low meat pH can be partially ameliorated in ground meat using pH adjustment.