Location: Quality and Safety Assessment Research Unit
Project Number: 6040-42440-001-021-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 19, 2025
End Date: Aug 18, 2028
Objective:
1. Examine alternatives to primary poultry processing approaches for scalding and picking in order to improve sustainability and efficiency while enhancing product safety and quality.
2. Investigate advanced chilling strategies and develop sensing technologies aimed at reducing foodborne contaminants and enhance efficacy of poultry chilling.
Approach:
This project rethinks poultry processing by incorporating innovative technologies, processes, procedures, and a data-driven approach to enhance efficiency while improving food safety. It explores alternative primary poultry processing methods, including scalding and de-feathering, and further processing techniques for both delayed and traditional processing. The project also examines sensing technologies for antimicrobial agents, such as peracetic acid (PAA), along with microbial sensing and the operation of chillers, including in-line immersion chilling. These technologies and strategies are designed to improve food safety, increase water and energy efficiency, and develop sensing and data-driven control strategies aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of antimicrobial interventions in poultry processing.
The investigation into carcass scalding and defeathering will focus on carcass pre-conditioning for scalding for both surface and muscle temperatures. Researchers will assess feather removal force and quality across various time-temperature series that reflect seasonal variations, aiming to establish the best surface temperature conditions for feather removal. This will help tailor thermal treatments to specific carcass regions and identify the most effective systems for feather removal based on those regions using targeted scalding.
To enhance the antimicrobial effectiveness of poultry chiller treatments, the team will implement sensor technology to monitor and provide data-driven feedback on PAA (peracetic acid), other antimicrobials, and microbial concentrations in the chiller. This rugged sensor will incorporate filtration and bacterial detection capabilities, allowing it to be installed in a processing plant. It will feature a dosing mechanism to automate the addition of antimicrobials to the chiller and provide real-time feedback on the current efficacy of the antimicrobial treatment against bacterial loads.
Once fully developed, this device will enable antimicrobial level monitoring to be centralized away from the plant, allowing for checks at multiple points in the processing system. The system will utilize a closed-loop control mechanism that integrates real-time PAA monitoring via interferometric sensors and data science concepts to automatically adjust chemical dosing within the integrated water management framework. This approach will optimize antimicrobial efficacy, reduce chemical consumption, and enhance food safety during poultry processing.
Additionally, to tackle inconsistencies in carcass exposure time to the antimicrobial disinfectant during chilling and to address the high energy and time demands of the chilling process, the team will develop in-line immersive chilling systems. These systems will use translation and rotation techniques to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of disinfection. In-line immersive chilling will eliminate common issues associated with variable pre-chilling times and the corresponding imprecision in thermal and antimicrobial intervention.Furthermore, it will enable comprehensive tracking of poultry products and reduce the consumption of resources such as energy and water during processing.