Processing starts in the grower house

摘要

Poultry feed must be discontinued prior to slaughter to reduce potential carcass contamination. The ideal feed withdrawal program should reduce visible and microbiological contamination without affecting the quality and yield of products. Removing feed and water from birds prior to catching and slaughter is a practice used in the poultry industry for more than 40 years. Its purpose is to empty the digestive tract, preventing inges-ta and/or faecal material leaking onto the carcasses during the evisceration process, thereby contaminating them. The time span the birds go off-feed prior to slaughter, which is the sum of the times required for fastening, catching, live-hauling and holding at the plant, should ideally be the minimum amount of time required to empty the digestive tract only. However, due to differences among the farms, this time is quite variable.