Perfect portions: Growth in sales of whole-muscle nuggets, strips and sandwich portions have increased processors' need for size reduction equipment

摘要

Foodservice accounts have become one of the broiler industry's major outlets for breast meat. Sales of whole-muscle items such as nuggets, strips and sandwich portions have helped fuel the growth in deboning. Faster growing birds and the pounds per man hour and yield advantages of processing larger birds have led to processors pushing up weights of birds raised for deboning. Just 10 years ago, a 6.5-pound live weight broiler was considered a "big bird," but now, the target live weight for many "big bird" plants is 8 pounds and higher. Larger birds mean bigger breast meat butterflies, filets and tenders. On average, an 8-pound live weight bird will provide a breast butterfly that weighs just over 1.5 pounds. Now, even some products like "chicken tenders" sold in restaurants are actually tender pieces cut from the roughly 5 ounce tenders that come off an 8 pound bird. Processors are doing more slicing, slitting, cubing and cutting of raw poultry meat then ever before.