Poultry Processors

Abstract

For poultry processing, live animals (chickens, ducks, turkeys) are received in cages and transferred to an area where they are stunned by an electrical shock, hung upside down to incise their neck for exsanguination, plunged in boiling water to become scalded, and plucked, usually by mechanical processes in an assembly-line fashion. Workers usually only assist these operations, but they may get burns or electrical shocks by accident or when the machines need human correction. The animals are then eviscerated manually, cleaned with running water, decapitated, declawed, cut into pieces, deboned and sliced before packaging for sale and/or cold storage.