Study on state of play of processing technologies and the absorption of water in poultrymeat : final report

This study has provided a comprehensive account of the current technologies used in the processing of poultry in the European Union and the amount of technologically unavoidable water added to broiler chickens by different chilling methods. The results obtained showed that the largest observed effect on the water/protein ratio was for portion type, with Breast behaving very differently to Leg and Carcase. Chilling method did not have a significant effect on Breast and provides evidence for retention of a single legal limit for Breast fillet. Immersion chilling adds significantly more water to Leg and Carcase than any other chilling method. This provides evidence for retention of a separate legal limit for immersion chilled carcases but there is no strong evidence to require different limits for the other four chilling methods. Leg also behaved very similarly to Carcase in this study. Thus it would be prudent to retain a separate legal limit for immersion chilled leg. Although this study has provided valuable information, data sets for some of the variables studied were small due to the unavailability of some of the required samples, so the results from this study should be treated with caution in considering future legislative limits.