Application of chilling methods on slaughtered poultry

The poultry carcasses must be chilled after slaughtering. Three procedures are usually applied: the air chilling, the air-spray chilling and the immersion-chilling. For the manufacturing of fresh products the air-chilling is applied, for frozen, as well as for deep-frozen products the air-spray chilling - or rarely the immersion-chilling - is used. At the marketing of poultry several regulations (EEC) should be taken into consideration, which regulate among others the water uptake in the processing plant, as well as the thaw loss of the poultry carcasses. Accordingly, limit values are laid down for each procedure. Using the air chilling, a storage temperature between 0 degrees C. Compared with the counterflow immersion-chilling, the air-spray chilling showed lower water uptake during the chilling (2.5 %), as well as a smaller that loss (1.8 %).