Chicken Dressing Plant - Process Flow

When I was seven years old, my mom took me to Bicol  for summer vacation – remembering their hospitality of preparing feast day after day for the whole duration of our stay. One night, I volunteered to help in cooking, the menu was Tinolang Manok - way out of the usual, they started from scratch – harvesting native chicken from backyard; I had witnessed how they slit its neck, then draining blood collected in a basin with rice grains like rituals, to manual plucking of feathers and removing of innards. From that night to a year, I never had appetite for Tinolang Manok.

Visiting a dressing plant for suppliers audit, reminded me of how I murdered a native chicken in Bicol for dinner – the process follows a standard procedure, but in dressing plant, machines does the killing for mass production to cater Filipino’s demands for chicken; human intervention on the process is to ensure standards to again cater Filipino’s demand for quality chicken.   

In total, a chicken undergo 24 stages to receive seal of quality for dispatch – (1) Hanging, (2) Stunning, (3) Slitting, (4) Blood letting, (5) Scalding, (6) De-feathering, (7) Head Removal, (8) Neck Slitting / Vent Opening, (9) Manual Evisceration, (10) Liver Collection, (11) Intestine Collection, (12) Gizzard Collection, (13) Crop / Proven Collection, (14) Trachea Collection, (15) Lung Removal, (16) Final Inspection, (17) Feet Cutting, (18) Chilling, (19) Dripping, (20) Classification of Chicken, (21) Sorting by weight (neck on), (22) Neck Cutting, (23) Sorting by Weight, and (24) Final Weighing per Crate.

Poultry farms, houses hatchlings in tunnel with ventilation system where temperature is controlled and it has an automatic feeding system. Temperature is maintained at 27^oC during morning and 25^oC at night. Houses can hold up to 40,000 heads. After 45 days of pampering and spoiling with feeds to obtain required weights, they are transported to dressing plants.

Note: I had learned that chicken manures are collected and sold to fish growers as feeds for 20 – 25 php/sack.

Live chicken are hanged in a conveyor and will then enter the stunning area. Stunning involves soaking in water with electricity. Manual slitting of the throat will follow and the blood will allow to drip before the next step.

The next step is scalding in which the dead birds will be soaked in boiling water for easy removal of feathers.

The birds will then enter the plucking machine to remove the feather. 

The birds will then pass the head pulling machine to separate the head.

Manual neck slitting and vent opening for easy evisceration

Manual evisceration will then follow. Continuous water sprinkling on the whole step of evisceration and organ collection to remove blood and other foreign adhering materials.

Individual parts like liver, intestines, gizzard, crop, proven, and trachea will be collected and packed according to buyer’s specifications. Lungs will also be manually removed.

It will undergo a final inspection to ensure that no innards are left. Feet will then be cut.

It will then fall into the pre-chilling tub. Maintaining temperature is 18^oC to 23^oC and a concentration of 30ppm (chlorine). Pre-chilled chicken will then move to the chilling tub with maintaining temperature of 0^oC to 2^oC and a concentration of 20ppm (chlorine).

Dressed chicken will then be hanged in the drip line to remove excess water.

Sorting done to remove dressed chicken not within the quality standards. Initial sorting by weight of dressed chicken (neck-on) was also done. Additional cleaning will be done if necessary.

Neck cutting and final sorting by weight

Dressed chicken will then be stored in walk-in chiller ready for dispatch.