Source: Tom Johnston, MEATINGPLACE, 2/27/19


Perdue Farms said Tuesday it has implemented a transportation system that raises the bar for bird welfare from area farms to its Milford, Del., organic chicken processing plant.

In the second phase of a two-part project, Perdue has activated covered, specially designed trailers with breathable side curtains and modular containers that give the birds more space and optimize oxygen, temperature and humidity control.

The containers are designed to work with the controlled atmosphere stunning (CAS) system that Perdue installed at the Milford plant in late 2017 during the project’s first phase. The birds never leave their containers as the flow through the CAS system, minimizing human handling of the birds.

Perdue claims it is the only major poultry company to adopt this fully-integrated system; there are only eight other installations of these container systems in the world.

Completion of this $20 million project is part of Perdue’s commitment to convert all of its slaughter facilities over to CAS instead of electrical stunning.

“When we took phase one of our CAS system live, we wanted to learn as much as we could and improve that process while we planned for this second and final phase. As a result, we’ve been able to fine tune this fully-integrated system that greatly reduces the stress on the birds from the farm to the harvest plant,” said Bruce Stewart-Brown, senior vice president of president of food safety, quality and live production, in a news release.“We’re proud to complete this project that raises the bar for the industry and continue on our animal welfare journey.”

Perdue said that beyond improvements to poultry welfare, the transportation system also has boosted fuel efficiency by 32 percent. The container system also includes an automatic wash machine that strengthens biosecurity by returning the cleanest possible containers back to the farm, the company noted.

Perdue Farms was among the more highly ranked companies for the second straight year in the global Business Benchmark for Animal Welfare.


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