Innovations in Poultry Meat Processing
Kiran, M.
Asst. Professor, Dept. LPT, Veterinary College, KVAFSU, Bangalore-560024
Keywords: Low atmospheric pressure stunning, Moisturized hot air, scalding spray washers, sanitizers, scalding, poultry meat, processing, quality, safety, shelflife, chicken
Introduction
The Indian chicken market is worth over $10 billion, expanding at a rate of over 10% yearly over the past decade. The average annual per capita consumption was expected to be 2.8 kg of chicken in 2013, with output at 3.5 million tonnes. Recent years have seen growth in the chicken meat business despite challenges such as unfavourable monsoon (affecting feed price), fluctuations in global maize and soymeal supplies, the risk of bird flu, differences in regional demand and supply, and a heavy reliance on the wet and live market. In the current wet market setting, the sale of chicken meat is often accomplished by killing the birds live in front of the customers. Some cities have modern processing factories where chicken is killed, cooled, packaged, and sold frozen. While only around 7-10% of all meat is processed further, that percentage is significant enough to yield a wide variety of value-added items such sausages, patties, lollipops, breaded nuggets, fried drumsticks, and other classic meat products. Making ensuring that chicken meat and meat products are safe to eat is a difficulty for the poultry processing industry, government authorities, meat scientists, merchants, and other associated sectors.
Customers want meat products that are easy to use, novel, reliable, and safe, and that taste and smell like the meat they were raised on. Changes in products, processes, marketing strategies, distribution channels, and even broadened conceptualizations all fall under the umbrella term “innovation,” which has been defined as “activity to encompass advancements in technology and improved methods of doing things.” Innovating methods to ensure meat is safe to consume has been pushed forward by a variety of different actors. Innovations in meat safety have been fueled in part by the meat business, concerned customers, and government officials. Several unfortunate occurrences have occurred in the meat industry and marketplace in recent years, damaging the product’s reputation among shoppers. Animal health issues (dioxins in meat, bird flu) and human health issues (obesity, cancer) have prompted a backlash against eating meat. Due to its nutritional and sensory features, as well as its culinary convenience, chicken has kept its individuality and a greater value compared to other species. The production and manufacture of meat products is undergoing a period of inventive dynamics as a result, making the development and implementation of alternative technologies to improve meat quality a key research topic in order to meet all these demands without sacrificing safety. Some recent developments in poultry slaughter, refrigeration, freezing, packing, and processing are covered below.
Technologies for improving meat quality
Low atmospheric pressure stunning: Unrelenting criticism on slaughter by animal rights activists led to the development of a new method known as low atmospheric pressure stunning (LAPS). This is a novel method in which birds are rendered unconscious by being placed in a sealed chamber, in which a vacuum pump is used to gradually reduce oxygen tension in the atmosphere. The method is called Low atmospheric pressure stunning (LAPS). The findings of the study led the researchers to the conclusion that LAPS has the potential to improve the welfare of poultry during the slaughtering process by gradually inducing unconsciousness without causing the birds any distress. This would eliminate the need for live shackling and ensure that every bird is adequately stunned prior to being exsanguinated.
Moisturized hot air scalding: The usual method of scalding involves submerging the carcasses in a water bath, which results in the formation of a bacterial soup and a high risk of carcass contamination due to the high incidence of cross contamination. Scalding has been given a fresh lease on life thanks to the development of an innovative technique involving moist hot air. During this step, certain areas of the carcass that require more scalding are targeted with moistened hot air that is directed at them by blowers and revolving nozzles. As a consequence, the aesthetic and bacteriological quality of the carcasses is improved both throughout the scalding process and once it has been completed. In comparison to traditional immersion scalding, this method consumes 75% less water and 50% less energy. Additionally, it results in cleaner carcasses and essentially eliminates the risk of cross-contamination.
Use of sanitizers during scalding: According to the findings of a survey that was carried out by the United States Poultry and Egg Association, of the businesses that add chemicals to scalder, half of them use chlorine and the other half use sodium hypochlorite. During the scalding process, sodium hypochlorite does not have a major influence on the bacterial levels that are present on the carcasses. The use of a chemical sanitizer in the scalder had a significant influence on the number of Aerobic Plate and E. coli organisms as well as the prevalence of Salmonella on chicken carcasses. A sanitizer can be used in the scalder to prevent the growth of salmonella in the scalder. This enables the use of lower scalder temperatures, which has a significant influence on the efficiency as well as the cost of scalding.
On-line brush and spray washers: The examination of the individual and combined effectiveness of five separate on-line wash steps applied between bleed-out and chilling in a commercial broiler processing plant led to the conclusion that the benefit of broiler carcass wash steps may not be evident when viewed individually. This was the conclusion reached as a result of the study. However, when paired with other processing processes, wash actions have the potential to be beneficial in reducing the amount of bacterial contamination on carcasses and can be helpful for disease management.
Automatic evisceration: To ensure that the finished products, including giblets, are of the highest possible quality, proper evisceration is absolutely necessary. The whole viscera pack may be extracted in a single step thanks to advances in automatic evisceration technology. After that, it is either quickly detached from the carcass and transported to a different shackle or it is positioned over the back of the product for hand harvesting. Either method offers significant advantages in terms of sanitation, quality, and the amount of labour that is saved. The presence of the important pathogen L. monocytogenes in different production steps of two poultry processing facilities, with automatic and manual evisceration to compare whether automatic technology can interfere in the presence of the pathogen, and the conclusion that products from a plant with manual evisceration were more contaminated than those from a plant with automated evisceration.
Shock wave treatment: The utilisation of shockwave technology in the process of beef tenderization results in a method that is not intrusive, has a low cost, and does not have an adverse effect on the microbiological or chemical stability of the product. However, commercial application is not currently possible due to certain limitations. These limitations include: damage to the packaging material after shockwave treatment; efficient shock wave delivery in an industrially resistant prototype; and effective parameters achieving meat tenderization, particular meat and corresponding settings on the equipment.
Technologies for improving safety and shelf-life
Clean air chilling: The traditional method of chilling entails submerging the corpses in a solution of slush ice and cool water that also contains one or more disinfectants. Processors have developed clean air chilling as an alternative to the use of sanitizers in response to an increase in the demand from consumers for products that are more “natural” and free of chemicals. This allows for a reduction in the pathogen load and a decreased likelihood of cross-contamination. During this process, a stream of cold dry air is expelled from specially designed nozzles in order to effectively exhaust any residual warmth from within the carcasses. This allows the temperature of the deep muscle to be reduced from +40 degrees Celsius to +4 degrees Celsius in less than an hour for a carcass that weighs 1.2 kilogrammes. This provides the benefit of a shorter chilling period while still ensuring a profound temperature drop in the muscle, being frost-free and consistent throughout the process, and losing less than 0.8% of its drip. Pathogen transmission can be reduced even more with the help of certain new experimental therapies that involve the use of steam before the air is cooled.
Super-chilling and vacuum packaging: The procedure of just freezing a small percentage of a product’s water content is referred to as “super-chilling” and “partial-freezing” respectively. Both of these words are used to describe the same thing. It is a procedure in which food goods are kept at a temperature that is 1-2 degrees Celsius lower than their freezing point. When it comes to super-chilling, the goal is to get as near to the meat’s freezing point as possible without the development of actual ice crystals. The initial freezing point of fresh beef is somewhere in the range of -1.5 to -2.0 degrees Celsius. The National Research Council (NRC) on Meat has developed a technology that uses vacuum packaging in conjunction with super-chilling to extend the shelf life of fresh chicken drumsticks to up to 30 days in chilled conditions without the need for freezing. This is in comparison to the traditional chilling method, which only lasts for 4-5 days.
Freezing: Even though freezing is a very ancient method of food preservation, its usage in the poultry business has undergone periodic cycles that necessitate its rebirth. Experiments conducted in the lab have shown that putting Campylobacter samples in the freezer for a period of several weeks will kill the bacteria. However, there is a dearth of research on the long-term advantages of freezing food. It indicates that innovative crust freezing of corpses, which involves applying a stream of cold air (at a temperature of -30 degrees Celsius) to the epidermal layer, is efficient in lowering the number of infections, despite the fact that it is quite expensive.
Decontamination using steam with cooling of carcass surface: The study to determine whether a modified air chilling system in combination with steam or hot water decontamination treatments could be used to reduce numbers of pathogens, particularly campylobacters, on the surface of poultry carcasses and concluded that treatment with water at 80 °C for 20 s followed by crust freezing, which reduced the numbers of C. jejuni and E. coli by 2.9 and 3.2 log10 cfu cm− 2, respectively, without extensive degradation of carcass appearance. Researchers evaluated ‘hot wash’ treatments to reduce the number of pathogenic and spoilage bacteria on raw retail poultry carcasses artificially inoculated with Escherichia coli K12 and Campylobacter jejuni AR6 and found reductions of 1.31 log10 cfu cm−2 in counts of E. coli K12 using a 20 s, 80 °C treatment. A 1.66 log10 cfu cm−2 reduction in C. jejuni AR6, was achieved by a 30 s, 75 °C treatment.
Feeding essential oils + organic acids: To acidify the crop to the point where Salmonella are unable to thrive, modest quantities (0.3 to 0.5%) of acetic, citric, and lactic acids have all been utilised. According to the findings of the study, lactic acid was the most efficient method, and adding 0.44 percent lactic acid to the water of broilers during the time when they were not receiving feed decreased the amount of Salmonella infection in crops by 80 percent. Feeding a selected and standardised combination of essential oils and organic acids acts in a synergistic way to inhibit oxidative reactions, stabilises intestinal microbiota, and enhances biological activity and efficiency in poultry and other animals, resulting in better colour and lipid stability with improved microbial quality. These benefits can be achieved in poultry and other animals.
Combination of ozone, UV light and pulsed UV: The Ozone is a known germicide and the effects are influenced by contact time, temperature, relative humidity and presence of inorganic and organic materials. However, ozone results in only surface decontamination and its penetration inside the poultry carcasses can be enhanced by combining with pulsed UV and or/UV light. Experiments conducted at NRC on Meat revealed significant reduction in microbial counts and improvement in shelf-life in poultry carcasses washed with TRIOZ-Meat washer with multiple hurdles viz, ozone, Pulsed UV laser and light and Ultrasonic waves.
Conclusions:
Poultry meat has a significant impact on human nutrition and health, and technological advances in the meat business have the potential to increase both the food’s nutritional content and its economic worth. Scientists across the world are experimenting with new technologies that may help the poultry business boost chicken consumption and enhance profitability. Extensive research and advances in the chicken meat business have led to the development of various management and intervention technologies with the goal of improving meat quality and food safety. While several of these technologies have shown promise in test tubes and small-scale fields, more work is needed before they can be used in a commercial meat processing factory. To improve animal welfare and ensure the safety of poultry sector meat and meat-based products, scientists want to investigate more animal-friendly production strategies in the near future. Core concerns that need to be investigated further include maintaining a high standard of quality in meat production and introducing new products to the market.
