Quality and Processability of Modern Poultry Meat

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Over the years, the poultry industry has evolved from selling mainly whole birds to mostly cut-up portions or further processed products. Additionally, changes in breeding and production have resulted in birds that grow bigger, faster, or produce more eggs for longer. To accommodate the changes, the industry has moved to more automation and increasing the number of birds that can be processed at once. However, this increase in efficiency and consumer desire for more convenient products (i.e., cut-up, ready-to-eat) comes with its own challenges since it is even more important that birds are more uniform/similar in their size, color, and texture. This is especially challenging given the rise in meat color, texture, and quality inconsistencies. This review focuses on the changes that occurred in poultry processing to date and describes challenges faced by modern poultry processors. ABSTRACT: The poultry meat industry has gone through many changes. It moved from growing dual-purpose birds (meat and egg production) taking ~110 days to reach 1.2 kg 100 years ago, to developing specialized meat breeds that grow to 2.5 kg within ~40 days. It also moved from selling ~80% whole birds to mostly selling cut up and further processed products in the Western world. This necessitated building large, centralized processing plants, capable of processing 15,000 birds per hr on a single line (60 years ago only 2500), that require higher bird uniformity (size, color, texture). Furthermore, consumer demand for convenient products resulted in introducing many cut-up fresh poultry (some companies have 500 SKU) and further processed products (chicken nuggets did not exist 50 years ago). Those developments were possible due to advancements in genetics, nutrition, medicine, and engineering at the farm and processing plant levels. Challenges keep on coming and today a rise in myopathies (e.g., so called woody breast, white striping, spaghetti meat), requires solutions from breeders, farmers, and processing plants, as more automation also requires more uniformity. This review focuses on the changes and challenges to the processing industry segment required to keep supplying high quality poultry to the individual consumer.