Content available at:
Español (Spanish) Português (Portuguese (Brazil))
Traditionally, the focus of the chicken processing plants is to reduce seizures. These are defined as the partial or total withdrawals of the broilers, the result of inadequate management during pre-slaughter and slaughter operations. During the visits to the processing plants, another control point is observed mainly on the equipment and the floors.
The purpose of this article is to invite readers to control the losses in performance, including what’s known as “Waste”, which in some plants comes to represent as a significant amount of prime kilos ending up at the by-product processor.
Why do they originate?
For example, we have observe the following scenarios:
Although the hooks are adequate for the weight of the birds to be slaughtered, the staff does not bring the legs to the bottom of the hooks.
Large chickens – weighing over 3.0 kilos – with thicker legs that are being processed. This thickness causes the legs to not properly reach the bottom of the hooks.
As the legs are not properly supported, some chickens fall in the following stages of the process:
Bleeding
Scalding
Plucking
Evisceration
EXPLANATION
Blood Tunnel
Depending on the speed of the process and the characteristics of this area, in many cases the birds cannot be picked up to be collected and get covered in blood. For this reason they end up at the plant where the by-products are processed.
Scalding
Due to the turbulence of the water; which is used to widen feather follicle, many chickens fall from the hooks. At the end of the process, once the tanks have been emptied, the carcasses appear to be fully cooked. This represents another circumstance of raw material that the by-product processor receives.
Plucking
The rotation of the finger discs as the birds pass by makes it easier for them to fall. In many plants, feathers are collected using conveyor belts that move them out of the plant, where they are temporarily stored in hoppers. In other cases, the chickens fall directly into the trough on the floor. A continuous re-circulation of water drags the feathers along with the dropped chickens to another section where they are temporarily stored in hoppers.
Evisceration
The positioning of the birds in the equipment that make up the automatic infrastructure is sometimes not adequate. That is why, during the operation of the machines, the chickens fall on the collecting tray loca...
