We finished the weekend's chicken processing with only one major issue. We struggled to get started and keep up both Friday and Saturday because we couldn't keep our scalder up to temp. We had lots of help and Nancy kept us going on the scalder, but on Saturday it caused us to come to an almost complete stop. It turned out that the element had failed. Sharon ended up running up to town about 20 miles away to buy another LP turkey fryer to scald in on Saturday morning which caused us to fall pretty far behind, but without it we would have been in even more trouble. We kept up pretty well on Saturday even though we didn't have any help. I'm always surprised by the number of chickens that our 4 kids, Sharon and I can process. I called the scalder retailer this morning and they'll be sending a new element to replace the one that failed. We still have one more light day of processing, mainly to put up our own chickens for the winter. Pasture raised chickens take a HUGE amount of work, but we know that they are really worth it. Since raising our own chickens I can taste the difference and also taste the chlorine in store bought chickens. So I decided to do some research into the chlorine use in chicken processing, and no, I didn't go to anti-mass production sites either. I used information that is for the chicken processors and from the USDA. If you want to know about NaOCl use in poultry processing read on.
In the mass production processing of chicken, chlorine bleach (NaOCl) (at a much higher concentration than consumer store bought bleach) is the most used chemical in mass production poultry processing. Here's how chlorine works - chlorine oxidizes and is used up when it contacts organic material (blood, fecal matter, fat, etc.). It is believed to break cell processes and oxygen use in cells and organisms. So chlorine is used in almost all stages of mass processing chickens. Mass production processors continually face the challenge of choosing between too much chlorine and too little throughout their processes. Too much chlorine and the processor wastes money. Too little and the huge amount of organic load doesn't get treated. As organic loads increase in the production of chickens more chlorine is needed to keep up with the amount of chlorine being used up. If you've ever seen pictures of chiller tanks that mass production chickens "soak/pass" through, you'll understand why processors need to use so much chlorine. But of course there is a down side to chlorine in chicken processing besides the taste of chlorine in your chicken right? Right! If the processors add enough chlorine to the process to stay ahead of the organic load there is what is called free available chlorine (FAC). FAC is able to be absorbed into foods. It is especially easily absorbed into unsaturated fat. Chickens are very high in unsaturated fat. Also absorbed into the food is Trihalomethane which is a byproduct of chlorine's contact with organic material. And guess what, chlorine incorporated into food animals and trihalomethane are known carcinogens. So do we use chlorine bleach? Yes, but only as a disinfectant for our equipment BEFORE and AFTER we process our chickens. Our chickens never soak in a chlorine solution as they do in mass production. You will never taste bleach in our chickens but you can be sure our tools and equipment are clean. So the next time you eat a store bought chicken, see if you can taste or smell that bleach, and when you enjoy one of ours you'll have one more reason to love ours.
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