Chicken Inspection at a Chicken Plant

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I can tell you a little bit about chicken that may make you never want to eat it again. The chicken you buy is 6 weeks old. No matter the size, it is 6 weeks old. That's as old as they are allowed to be before slaughter. Then they are slaughtered and depending on the brand you get, depends on the way they are cleaned and processed, but all of it is supposed to be processed the same, but different plants have different versions of that procedure. The brand I prefer to use is Pilgrim's Pride chicken over Tyson because Tyson is not as clean as Pilgrim's Pride. They leave feathers on the wings and legs and Pilgrim's Pride does not. I don't use Purdue because you are paying for a name that is lying to you from the get go. They do use hormones or the chickens would not be just 6 weeks old. They also do not have a free range area for chickens, unless you want to call an area the size of a small back yard free range. It's not. And when someone advertises that it's never been frozen, they are liars too. It is flash frozen at 42 degrees below zero as soon as it is processed and held there until it gets on the truck to go to where it is going and remains frozen until it is defrosted at the store. When buying a whole chicken, if you ever do, make sure the insides are cleaned. They can still have their lungs and other organs in them if the inspector didn't do their job correctly. So in the area of the ribs, there could be some meaty things those are lungs, pull them out along with all other things that may look out of sorts and toss it. If you ever get a chicken or parts of one that smell, toss it, don't try to cook out the smell, you will make everyone sick. I know you knew that though. How do I know all of this? I was a USDA FSIS IO (United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety Inspection Services Inspection Operations). And these little things stuck with me, I can tell you also that if all the chickens are small, you need to be careful because they could have been sick, and those were the ones that passed inspection. They could have all had airsaculitis. A lung disease that they get during the hot months because of the heat. We once tossed a whole truck load because they were all sick and we couldn't pass any of them, the company, was furious, but they couldn't argue with us because we could shut their whole plant down and they knew it. The chickens were sick, and stunk very bad. It was a horrible night that night. I gave up chicken for 6 months when I went to work there, it was so eye opening, then I decided it didn't matter because as long as I bought the ones we processed, I was ok. Some parts are cut from bad chickens and packaged together with other parts cut from bad chickens, but most of the time the cut parts come from a plant that only does cut up chickens and never sells whole chickens. I retired early from this job due to an injury, but I will never forget what I learned there, it was an amazing job and I did not want to be medically retired but it happened and I had to be. I hope some of this information helps someone. ~Peace