Skin Contamination of Broilers During Commercial Evisceration

INTRODUCTION MANY modifications have taken place in the techniques used to process poultry during recent years. The findings of Gunderson et al. (1954) led to warm evisceration of poultry in practically all commercial processing plants. Drewniak et al. (1954) made an extensive study of bacterial contamination during commercial evisceration but changes in techniques and processing equipment since this report may have established a different contamination pattern during evisceration. Walker and Ayres (1956 Walker and Ayres (1959) reported on the number and kinds of microorganisms associated with commercially dressed chickens and turkeys. Their work did not include variations in microbial numbers during the evisceration procedure since their samples were taken before and after evisceration but not at intermediate points. The research reported herein was initiated to determine the pattern of contamination at intermediate stations during the evisceration process and to study possible measures to reduce contamination. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE Thirteen commercial poultry processing plants were …