Developments in turkey meat harvesting technologies

Abstract

Over the past half century the turkey industry has seen significant changes in the methods used to harvest meat. Some of the major changes include an increase of over three fold in line speed (new plants are designed to process up to 3,600 bph) and processing larger birds; both resulted in a six fold rise in kg processed per hour. The industry has also seen a large increase in the proportion of cut up and deboned meat (i.e. helped year round sales), as well as substantial improvements in sanitation. These advancements have been possible due to knowledge gained in areas such as genetics, muscle biology (post mortem processes), live bird handling (transportation, unloading, stunning), heat and mass transfer (scalding, chilling) and computer science (e.g. image analysis, in-line weighing and tracking). This review includes a general summary of the steps involved in primary turkey processing and focuses on several principles that have been used to achieve greater efficiencies in mechanising the process. The main focus areas include automating unloading, stunning, chilling and mechanical filleting. These topics are also used to demonstrate the importance of moving from a batch operation to a continuous line where speed, efficiency and traceability could be improved by mechanisation. Overall, integrating and automating the whole process is a challenge that must be met by both the processing plant personnel and equipment manufacturer who should understand the whole farm to fork approach.

Keywords::

• automation
• chill
• meat processing
• mechanisation
• poultry
• review
• turkey