The usual rule is that any crop is highest in price when it first
comes on the market and cheapest just after the point of its
greatest production. Thus, broilers are high in May and cheap in
September. In such cases the goods are carried from the season of
plenty to the following season of scarcity. This period is always
less than a year. The idea circulated by wild writers, that cold
storage poultry was kept several years is an economic impossibility.
The interest on the investment alone would make the holding of
storage goods into the second season of plenty, quite unprofitable,
but when the costs of storage, insurance and shrinkage are to be
paid, storing poultry for more than one season becomes absurd. The
fowl that has been once frozen cannot be made to look "fresh killed"
again. For that reason packers like to get a monopoly on a
particular market so that the two classes of goods will not have to
compete side by side. The quality of the frozen fowl when served is
very fair, practically as good as and some say better than the fresh
killed.
Cold storage poultry is best thawed out by being placed over night
in a tank of water. Poultry prejudice prevents the practice of
retailing the goods frozen, though this method would be highly
desirable.
Drawn or Undrawn Fowls.
Within the last two or three years there has been a great hue and
cry about the marketing of poultry without drawing the entrails.
The objection to the custom rests upon the general prejudice to
allowing the entrails of animals to remain in the carcass. If a
little thought is given the subject, however, it is seen that human
prejudice is very inconsistent in such matters. We draw beef and
mutton carcasses, to be sure, but fish and game are stored undrawn,
and as for oysters and lobsters we not only store them undrawn but
we eat them so.
The facts about the undrawn poultry proposition are as follows: The
intestines of the fowl at death contain numerous species of
bacteria, whereas the flesh is quite free from germs. If the carcass
is not drawn, but immediately frozen hard, the bacteria remain
inactive and no essential change occurs. If the carcass is stored
without freezing, or remains for even a short time at a high
temperature, the bacteria will begin to grow through the intestinal
walls and contaminate the flesh.
Now, if the fowl is drawn, the unprotected flesh is exposed to
bacterial contamination, which results in decomposition more rapidly
than through the intestinal walls. The opening of the carcass also
allows a greater drying out and shrinkage.
If poultry carcasses were split wide open as with beef or mutton,
drawing might not prove as satisfactory as the present method, but
since this is not desirable, and since ordinary laborers will break
the intestines and spill their contents over the flesh, and
otherwise mutilate the fowl, all those who have had actual
experience in the matter agree that drawing poultry is unpractical
and undesirable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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