Chicken is the best food ever to exist; you would agree with us on this too, right? There never goes by a day when we don’t eat chicken or any other poultry bird, and there is even no harm in doing so because they are rich in protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals, all essential for our diet.
However, have you ever wondered how poultry farms process poultry so that we can take it out of the freezer and throw it in hot oil? Many things go behind what you see as a simple packet of boneless chicken. We all have a slight idea of poultry farms; we have seen some images of chickens locked up in farms in academic books, but that is not it. From the selection of chicken to cutting it and processing it so that it doesn’t spoil soon, it is all that poultry farms have to take care of so that you can eat quality chicken every day. Perhaps it will be in your favor if you know what happens to the chicken that you eat and find it so tasty that you never want to stop eating it.
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Breeding Of Birds:
The birds you see outside of a poultry farm are primarily different because, for poultry production, the breeding of birds has to be stopped at a particular time when they reach their ideal weight. Like the ones that are seven weeks old are classified as fryers and above that are roasters that are almost 14 weeks old. This is their ideal time to be cut; however, some other aspects are also involved in breeding other than this. The fat content and the microbial contamination are two things that poultry look into closely so that the chicken you get is all according to the ideal food standards. The fat content of the chicken is checked, and if it is not according to the standards, then it can’t be used. Similarly, the chicken shouldn’t be contaminated with any microorganisms as it will risk many humans’ health.
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Slaughtering Of Birds:
Once the birds are magnificent to be slaughtered, they are first taken of their feed so that when they are slaughtered, there are reduced risks of contamination. As stress can alter the chicken quality, birds are caged at night and taken to the slaughterhouse. The room is usually illuminated by a red light as red light helps calm the birds. If a slaughterhouse has poultry slaughter equipment, they put each bird on shackles by suspending their legs from where they are passed through a water bath where they are made unconscious by electric current. Then they are taken forward by shackles where a mechanical knife cuts their neck, and they are finally killed. All of these hi-tech machineries like the shackles, electric current bath, and mechanical knife can be found at any poultry slaughter equipment manufacturer shop.
However, the other way is to slaughter them using a knife with their hands. Once they are killed, they are then scalded to soften their skins and can be removed easily. Then they go through a feather picking machine where rubber fingers beat their feathers off their skin. Now it’s time for their heads and legs to be removed, and for this again, a mechanical knife is used, which cuts their heads and legs off. Then they go through the process of evisceration where all their unwanted parts are removed from their body, and then the chicken is finally inspected for the reason that it is or is it not meeting the quality standards.
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Processing of Birds:
After the slaughtering process, the chicken that we get is ready to be cooked, but it is processed to increase its life. It is first chilled either by water chilling or air chilling; both are equally good and cause no harm to the chicken. After chilling, the customers can buy it as it is still raw and can be used as raw chicken. However, many customers want processed chicken like battered and breaded so that they don’t have to add anything to add taste to it, and they can have it by frying it. Processing also involves deboning and grinding raw chicken for people who like it that way. So, one chicken but so many ways to eat perhaps that’s why we all love it so much and never get bored of eating it.
See Related Articles:
- Essential Equipment for Poultry Business
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What Is Poultry – Fat Content and Microbial Contamination in Poultry
