How that chicken got on your plate

Why there are still feathers, other questions answered

By Mayer Fertig

Issue of March 2, 2007

Frank Perdue used to say that “it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken,” but how many people does it take to make a kosher chicken? And why can’t they get all those darn feathers off? To get the answers, I recently took a ride — a long ride — to Mifflintown, Pa., and the headquarters of Empire Kosher Poultry.

My first move was a smart one. I got the other guy — the Empire marketing rep who accompanied me — to drive. There and back. (I actually did offer to take over, but he saw how tired I was and, wisely, declined.)

We were running late, and when we arrived at the sprawling plant we were greeted and rushed right to the “Live Room” where the shochtim (ritual slaughterers) were starting on the last batch of birds to be processed that week.

The shochtim live mostly in Baltimore (about two hours away) and Lakewood, NJ (several hours in the other direction), and stay at the plant 40 miles west of Harrisburg from Sunday to Thursday. By Thursday afternoon they’re ready to pack up and get home for Shabbos. We weren’t about to stand in their way. They were warm and friendly, sure, but they also have sharp knives. Before entering the Live Room we were suited up with earplugs and two layers of smocks to protect our clothing.

The Live Room apparently is so named because it’s the only place along the production line where the chickens are still, well, live. Inside, the quarters were close, there were puddles that I really didn’t want to step in and the noise of the production line machinery was intensely loud.

One of the mashgichim (rabbinic supervisors), Rabbi Yecheskel Feit, shouted a running explanation into my ear as we moved around, crossing catwalks and climbing slick metal stairways to move from one part of the room to another.

The nearly three hour production process began as a half dozen or so metal crates of chickens automatically opened in tandem and were slowly tipped. The chickens gently slid into a metal bin. Flying feathers wafted through the air. The chickens seemed very quiet.

Aside from the general principle of “tzar baalei chaim,” not causing pain to any living creature, transferring the chickens from the crates to the bin gently is important, Rabbi Feit explained, as bruising or injury could render the birds traif, unfit for kosher consumption.

The bin leads to a conveyer belt rolling beneath our feet that carries the birds to where the shochtim, their assistants, and a mashgiach, are standing. Usually, two teams work at once, with a goal of processing ninety chickens a minute. The work is demanding, and each cut must be made precisely. Shochtim take frequent breaks and generally are only performing shechitah for a total of about three and a half hours a day.

The actual shechitah (kosher slaughter) is very quick. One man takes a bird and holds it for the shochet. He grasps the bird by the neck and, seemingly with no effort, makes a single pass with a razor-sharp rectangular knife. A quick inspection confirms the cut was made properly, and the bird is handed off to another man who puts it head first into a moving row of metal cones. The expected byproduct of shechitah drains away into a culvert with running water built into the floor as the chicken moves into the next part of the production line where it will be de-feathered.

At any point if questions are raised about the condition of the knife, the shechitah performed on dozens of birds might be invalidated. Every seven minutes, regulated by red lights, the production line stops long enough for blades to be inspected.

The blade must be perfectly smooth, and shochtim test for nicks by running the blades gently over their fingernails. If any doubt is raised about the condition of the knife the production line is stopped and anywhere from two to six minutes worth of production is removed and discarded. Not sold as traif, but as a safeguard against mix-ups, discarded as unfit for human consumption. On average, that happens once a day, I was told.

Turkeys are also shechted in that room, though not while I was there. When shechitah on turkeys is called into question, a system of metal bands is used to mark the birds that are then sold off as non-kosher.

Back in the side room where we put on our smocks we were able to remove our earplugs and Rabbi Feit handed over a shechitah knife for me to test on a fingernail. As I gingerly touched the blade and felt for nicks I recalled a sixth grade rebbe describing an injury he suffered while attempting this very trick. Feit used the knife to slice a piece of paper into small pieces as he explained that any of seven different errors or problems can render a shechitah invalid.

At this point we said our goodbyes to Rabbi Feit, an operations analyst in Empire’s back offices, Shari Book, continued our tour. Book has an agricultural business degree from Penn State, and grew up around the plant, which has been in Mifflintown since the early sixties. She was in the plant even before she was born, she said, since her mother worked there during her pregnancy.

Finding feathers on dinner has long been a complaint of kosher poultry consumers. Here’s why that often happens, despite best efforts.

In non-kosher poultry plants a freshly processed chicken is immediately immersed in scalding hot water. The feathers come right off, leaving the chicken shiny and neatly denuded. A cartoon image comes to mind of a furry character following an all-over haircut. But hot water and freshly slaughtered kosher chicken don’t mix since the hot water would make it impossible to then remove blood through soaking and salting, as halacha requires.

Instead, these chickens went through what Book cheerfully described as a “cold water scald.” The feathers are removed (mostly) and the temperature of the bird is brought down with water regulated to between 30 and 40 degrees.

The chickens then go through a variety of steps to clean them and remove various parts. At each step of the way are employees cleaning up after the last step to catch say, stray feathers, or other details which might be cosmetically unpalatable when spotted in a butcher’s poultry case. Livers and gizzards are separated and either saved or discarded, depending on the day’s production needs.

Most importantly, however, are the inspections. Three USDA inspectors and three mashgichim work along the production line. Each looks at every third chicken, paying particular attention to the large intestine. This means that each chicken is inspected twice: for health concerns like ruptures which could spread e. coli bacteria, and for halachic problems, like scarring, or excess blood in the body cavity. The former could render a bird unfit for consumption while the latter could make it treif. When we walked by the discard bins the one behind the mashgichim was twice as full as the one behind the USDA inspectors.

“The USDA will let it go,” said Book. “It’s all in the standard. It’s still OK by USDA standards as far as quality is concerned. As far as kashrut, it’s not good.” Some people on the production line answer to a higher authority.

After the chickens are cleaned and inspected comes soaking and salting.

The chickens are soaked in a ten thousand gallon vat for half an hour to 35 minutes; turkeys a little longer. Salting is automated, performed by a new machine that Empire recently designed and built in-house. It does the job faster and better, I’m told, than the old method of doing it by hand. A mashgiach checks to see that each chicken is thoroughly covered with salt, which the machine pours in from above. Book said the plant uses approximately two 53’ trailer loads of salt each week. After the chickens are salted they sit on a very slow-moving conveyer that takes the required one-hour to move the chickens to where they are dropped into the first of three quick rinses.

It’s the salting that makes kosher chicken taste better than non-kosher, according to chefs. I wouldn’t necessarily take Empire’s word for it, either, but the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and a food industry publication called Cook’s Illustrated have all reported on extensive taste-testing done a number of years ago. Foodies determined that it was the salting which sets kosher chicken apart from others in a very good way.

After the soaking and salting the production line moves onto packaging. The company sells chicken and turkey packed in several dozen different ways, including pre-cooked and frozen varieties, but all have something new in common, following the scandal of treif chicken sold as kosher in Monsey, and the  commotion over mislabeled Cornish hens here on Long Island. Each chicken or chicken part is factory sealed and marked with a holographic sticker that, together, meets the halachic requirement of two signs marking kosher slaughtered meat and poultry. [Editor's note Oct. 2, 2008: The holographic sticker is no longer in use.]

Butchers are free to open the factory packaging but are prohibited from re-affixing the Empire brand name to a repackaged product. The joint OU and KAJ hashgachot only extend as far as the new packaging.

The plant processes sixty thousand chickens a day, plus another six or seven thousand turkeys. It takes 700 to 800 union employees nearly three hours to process each chicken. Non-kosher plants do the job with far fewer employees in less than 45 minutes. That goes a long way to explain the pricing variations between kosher and non-kosher poultry. Luckily, they don’t do them one at a time.

Nearly three hours later, the tour was done. I was even more exhausted than when we began. Shari Book seemed tired too, after shouting over the machines for so long to make herself heard. The plant is huge, constant care is required to not slip and fall, or hit your head on something overhead. In some spots additional care is worthwhile to avoid being dripped on by chickens whirring by (mechanically, of course) overhead. For that matter, being hit by a falling chicken is not out of the question either. But I was satisfied, because I know knew the answer to a question I, myself, have asked on so many occasions: Why can’t they do something about those darn feathers?