Hygiene aspects of modern poultry chilling

An evaluation was made of six commercial poultry chilling systems in relation to factors affecting microbial contamination of carcasses. These systems included water immersion chilling, air chilling and air chilling with evaporative cooling using water sprays. Samples of neck skin and body cavity we...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of food microbiology 2000-06, Vol.58 (1), p.39-48
Main Authors: Allen, Vivien M., Corry, Janet E.L., Burton, C.H., Whyte, R.T., Mead, G.C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Biological and medical sciences
Chickens
Chilling
Cold Temperature
Coliforms
Colony Count, Microbial
Food industries
Food Preservation - methods
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Hygiene
Meat and meat product industries
Poultry
Poultry Products - microbiology
Pseudomonads
Pseudomonas
TVC
Water
water sprays
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Summary:An evaluation was made of six commercial poultry chilling systems in relation to factors affecting microbial contamination of carcasses. These systems included water immersion chilling, air chilling and air chilling with evaporative cooling using water sprays. Samples of neck skin and body cavity were taken from carcasses, together with samples from the chilling environment. These were examined for total aerobic mesophilic microbes and counts of presumptive coliform bacteria and Pseudomonas spp. at specific points in the chilling process. Physical measurements included surface and deep-muscle temperatures of carcasses, water temperatures and chlorine concentrations in the immersion system and air speed and temperature during air chilling. The results obtained for water immersion chilling confirmed previous experience that the washing effect reduces microbial contamination of carcasses, although initially the numbers of pseudomonads tended to increase. The air chillers varied in design and mode of operation, but had little overall effect on microbial contamination of the skin. When a completely dry process was used, microbial numbers were reduced approximately ten-fold in the body cavity. However, the use of water sprays tended to increase contamination of the cavity, while relatively heavy spraying using non-chlorinated water, resulted in a substantial increase in the numbers of pseudomonads.
ISSN:0168-1605
1879-3460
DOI:10.1016/S0168-1605(00)00259-2