Further processing is increasing on an almost daily basis, bringing greater profitability to the processing plant given the added value associated with cut-up and deboned and meat when compared to whole birds
Pre-further processing
Where cut and deboning are conducted manually, it is important to ensure that correct conditions are in place to minimize losses prior to deboning and cutup taking place and during the operations themselves.
Once birds have been eviscerated, they must be chilled using either water or air chillers.
Irrespective of the chilling method used, it is important not to subject carcasses to sudden changes in temperature, as this can result in muscle fibers breaking and the protein denaturing, which significantly affects ability to hold water. For this reason, in some plants the evisceration section is temperature controlled so the reduction in carcass temperature occurs gradually.
It is worth remembering that, while birds are still alive, their body temperature is 40-42 C. On leaving the bleed tunnel on route to the scalder, this can drop to 38 C, and then rise again in the scalder to have surface temperature of 42 C for efficient plucking. Washing prior to evisceration also lowers the body temperature as room-temperature water is usually used.
To help minimize weight losses during deboning and cutup, water absorption during chilling should be kept to a minimum.
A careful eye also needs to be kept on the flow of birds being placed on the cone transporter or en route to stationary cones to prevent bottlenecks occurring, as carcasses can lose weight due to delays. Trials have shown that most losses – 1.02 percent – occur during the first 30 minutes of further processing.
During cut and deboning
If the management of cut-up and deboned pieces is not fluid, then there is further risk that bottlenecks may occur, but there are several other aspects that also need to be closely monitored.
Carcass temperature needs to be as low as possible, ideally within a range of 0-2.5 C. To ensure this, in many plants, as circumstances dictate, carcasses selected for cutup are stored in cold rooms. When carcasses are cut up, water loss or shrinkage is minimized at 1.5-2.5 percent as the carcass’s moisture content is kept at close to freezing point.
To help control carcass temperature, environmental temperature needs to also be controlled. The cutup section is usually kept at 8-12 C, and studies have shown that carcasses start to lose some of their water content when the environmental temperature rises above 3 C. Additionally, by keeping the environmental temperature low, bacterial growth is slowed.
Achieving good anatomical cuts is important to ensure that parts of individual pieces are not lost and attached to others. The industry in Brazil, for example, has developed a series of knives especially developed for each one of operations workers carry out. Alongside this, a technique has been developed that ensures that cuts to the joints are made with a high level of precision.
The quality of blade edges is also highly important. To ensure that they are of a high enough quality, similar to surgical scalpels, they must pass the paper cut test without exception. A failure to do so may result in cuts having to be made twice and this can result in damage to skin and meat. Additionally, each operation takes longer, resulting in buildup of bottlenecks, which can result in weight loss. While each of these individual issues may seem small, given the high volumes of birds processed, cumulatively, their impact is high.
Cone deboning
The same care and attention needs to be paid at this stage as the preceding stages. However, in removing meat from the carcass, workers need to combine two skills: cutting the meat, and removing it in such a way that any residual meat on the carcass is kept to a minimum. The achieve this, workers must keep knives flush to the bone.
A good example of the advantages of careful further processing is offered by Brazil, Latin America’s biggest exporter of deboned and cut-up meat, which has specialized in supplying demanding markets, such as Japan and China.
These markets require cartilage removal from the thorax and thigh bones. But rather than being deemed second quality, these cartilage pieces are sold as higher-value snacks, illustrating the benefits of ensuring precise workmanship at this stage of operations.
Careful further processing can maximize yields. For example, the careful removal of cartilage can result in a high-value product to be sold in its own right. | Eduardo Cervantes Lopez
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