Value-Added Poultry Takes Flight

November 2003

Ever since research indicated that poultry was a healthful, lower-fat protein source, consumers have been clamoring for it. Since 1960, when chicken comprised only 16% of overall meat, poultry and fish consumption, its market share has steadily increased to 35% in 2000. Consumers now eat 81 lbs. of chicken per year. Turkey consumption has climbed as well, more than doubling in the last 25 years.

Poultry’s healthful profile may form the base of this increased consumption, but it isn’t the whole bird, or even birds sold as parts (despite the popularity of boneless, skinless chicken) that has caused the poultry industry to soar so dramatically. Without the introduction of products that add more variety, value and quality to the basic birds, the industry wouldn’t have taken off. Many areas of the food industry bandy about the buzzword “value-added,” but nowhere has the concept been more successful than in the poultry industry.

Finding the edge
“It’s a very competitive market we are in,” says Joe DePippo, president, DePippo and Company, Brevard, NC, food-industry marketing consultants. “The good news is that the poultry industry is continuing to grow nicely. Today, you either have to be really big, or fit a niche.” The niche, he says, can involve either customizing products to meet whatever needs consumers have or some form of differentiating the product, such as all-natural and organic applications. Even the quick-service sector demands and delivers more creativity and freshness. “Look at the new Burger King chicken sandwich, a chicken and sautéed-pepper salad on French bread. Everyone is trying to raise the bar and add quality to the menu,” he points out.

In the retail market, DePippo also observes an increase in value-added poultry offerings in the deli and frozen cases. “There’s a tremendous selection out there for the consumer. Products like fully cooked strips of chicken that are seasoned and flavored are everywhere,” he says.

What exactly is a value-added poultry product? Retail and foodservice products both share similarities: ease of preparation, added flavor and variety of form. Consumers want products that are already seasoned and fast and easy to make, but many also enjoy the concept of “speed-scratch” where, says DePippo, they can participate in the process of cooking. Products like Short Cuts® from Perdue Farms Inc., Salisbury, MD, and deli rotisserie chicken fall into this category.

Foodservice operations, depending on the segment, may want products that are custom-made, easy for a less-skilled labor force to execute and consistent in quality. Higher-end restaurants may want to merchandise the idea of serving high-quality organic, free-range or natural chicken, or specialty poultry products such as squab or pheasant.

Retail and foodservice alike desire premarinated, topically flavored, battered and breaded poultry products. “Poultry companies are looking for ways to help operators achieve their goals,” DePippo says, and this includes working closely with large foodservice chains to develop custom flavors, forms and textures.

What’s the flap?
In the last 10 years, the variety of available poultry products has increased exponentially. Today’s products provide evidence of the growing desire for high flavor. According to Springdale, AR-based Tyson Foods, Inc.’s 2000 “Menus Today” survey, Cajun, Caesar and barbecue have become everyday flavors, while extremes like super hot and extra crispy are gaining more favor.

“I would say that all the ethnics are still popular,” says Larry Russell, senior application scientist, Kerry Seasonings, Beloit, WI. “A number have been around for a long time — Italian, Southwest, Mexican — but now South American, Cuban, Caribbean along with Asian and Pacific Rim, are also popular.” He observes that roasted flavors are hot, including roasted garlic and roasted onion, and so are grilled or charred and herby flavors.

Ethnic flavors that have been around for a long time like Chinese, Italian and Mexican have become familiar, but consumer sophistication now demands that all ethnic foods retain authenticity. Manufacturers are fine-tuning flavors, so that Italian is more regional, Hispanic food encompasses other Latin cuisines and Asian goes beyond Chinese to include Thai and Vietnamese. But at the same time, there is a fusion of flavors — “Asian” may include flavors like lemon grass, ginger and mint leaves, and “Mediterranean” may incorporate the combined flavors of Greek, Italian and Spanish cuisines.

Restaurants, especially those with limited storage, are demanding already-spiced products that chefs can adapt to many different applications. “Restaurants are asking for poultry products that may just be called ‘spicy’ so that they can adjust them for different dishes. They don’t want products with a very specific flavor profile, like Mexican, Indian or Cuban, because it has limited application,” says Chris Wolf, corporate chef for Noble and Associates, Springfield, MO. “What is showing up on menus and what chefs are asking for are products prepared with a particular cooking method, especially grilled with a variety of flavors, like mesquite-grilled or chipotle-grilled. That way, they can use the products in a variety of ways — in a salad, on a sandwich or as an entrée.”

Wolf also sees bone-in chicken making a comeback, perhaps premarinated and spiced, but with the bone in to enable a slower cook. “Bone-in chicken has more flavor and is more moist and tender,” he says. “People want that old-fashioned falling-to-pieces kind of chicken.”

From patties to popcorn
Poultry products now come in almost any form imaginable. The techniques and forms aren’t necessarily new, but the poultry companies are promoting them like never before.

Popular formats include patties, nuggets, wings, popcorn, tenders and rotisserie-roasted. Searing, chopping, coating, crusting and multitechnique products are prevalent. Newer foodservice products include glazed, spicy wings like Perdue’s fully cooked Honey BBQ Glazed Kick’N Wings®; a semi-boneless turkey, which has some bones removed for faster cooking, but retains some bones for more flavor and moistness; and the new Chicken Chippers™, slices of chicken meat in tortilla-chip breading marketed for dipping or as a nacho component.

Ruiz Food Products, Inc. Dinuba, CA, debuted El Monterey® Cruncheros™, a line of frozen, lightly battered and fried, crunchy and spicy snacks that include chicken and cheese taquitos, Southwest chicken and three-cheese grilled-chicken quesadillas.

Tyson’s products include chicken burgers ground from boneless, whole-muscle chicken and Popcorn Chicken Bites™, bite-sized pieces available both seasoned and unseasoned. On the retail side, meal kits have everything to make a meal. Tyson’s selections include fajita, fried-rice, quesadilla and stir-fry dinners, with spiced chicken, vegetables and anything else to make the meal complete, such as rice or tortillas.

Bagged nuggets, patties and tenders, boxed sliced and diced chicken, and frozen breaded and boneless poultry products fit right into the speed-scratch trend; consumers can add their own spices and side dishes.

Turkey producers, too, are adding value to their poultry. Marinated turkey tenderloins feature breast meat cut in smaller pieces and marinated, designed so that cooks can throw them on the grill or stovetop and have a meal ready in 20 minutes. One growing product area is ground turkey. “Consumers are looking for a ground product they don’t feel guilty about eating, and with turkey, they can lose the fat, but not the flavor,” says Sherrie Rosenblatt, director of public relations for the Washington, D.C.-based National Turkey Federation. Fully cooked, frozen turkey meatballs and turkey parts are two newer products that help consumers create easy meals.

Because of the popularity of white meat, chicken producers have had a surplus of dark meat, much of which is sent overseas. While the meat does appeal to U.S. Hispanic and Asian ethnic groups, these markets can no longer take care of all of the excess, so producers have begun to find ways to make dark meat more convenient and acceptable to all consumers. Many dark-meat products are now on the market made from chopped and formed meat; they are more palatable thanks to new technology using products.

It’s only natural
While conventionally raised whole-bird and whole-muscle chicken and turkey and processed products have by far the largest segment of the poultry market, specialty products are gaining ground. Organic and natural chicken, for example, find favor with both consumers and upscale restaurateurs.

According to a Roper Starch Worldwide study, by 2001, 63% of Americans reported that they bought organic food and beverages at least some of the time. And 40% of these same respondents said that they would be buying even more in the coming year. In response to this trend, 73% of conventional grocery stores and about 20,000 natural-food stores now offer organic products.

“There is a huge opportunity for the natural and organic producers,” says DePippo. “The market is small relative to the big picture, but eventually, everything that has happened in the chicken market will happen with the natural and organic chickens. The Whole Foods, Wild Oats and Andronico’s supermarket chains are looking for those kinds of products.” He believes that over time, the organic- and natural-chicken producers will also move into value-added products.

Today, many “natural” supermarkets add the value onsite or in central commissaries by marinating organic and natural whole-muscle turkey and chicken pieces, and packaging them for the fresh-meat case or selling the items in the butcher section.

Chefs, too, want organic products. The National Restaurant Association, Washington, D.C., reports that 57% of restaurants that have per-person check averages of $25 or more offer organic items. Even restaurants in the $15 to $24 per-person check-average range offer organic items 29% of the time.

An Organic Trade Association, Greenfield, MA, survey last year found that the fastest-growing organic categories between 1999 and 2000 included poultry. With consumer demand increasing, no doubt organic poultry products will become even more prevalent in the market.

Recently, the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) created one set of standardized rules with the aim of bringing uniformity to the industry and to processed products. The new regulations mean organic food products are sold within one of four categories:
100% Organic. Contains 100% organic ingredients and can use the USDA seal.
Organic. Contains 95% or more organic ingredients and can use the USDA seal.
Made with Organic Ingredients. At least 70% of the product is organic; cannot use the USDA seal.
Contains Organic Ingredients. Less than 70% of the product is organic. Although the word “organic” cannot appear on the front of the package, organic ingredients can be listed on the back.

The new regulations pose some challenges to product developers. Because no public source of either approved organic ingredients or their suppliers exists, suppliers need to be contacted separately. In addition, some ingredients may be prohibited from use. Those currently acceptable that apply to the poultry industry include: flavors derived from nonsynthetic sources only, not produced using synthetic solvents and carrier systems or any artificial preservative; enzymes derived from edible, nontoxic plants, nonpathogenic fungi or nonpathogenic bacteria; tocopherols derived from vegetable oil when rosemary extracts are not a suitable alternative; and xanthan gum and water-extracted gums, such as arabic, guar, locust-bean and carob-bean.

Some ingredients are unacceptable, unavailable or difficult to source, posing a challenge to food processors. These substances include: certain preservative additives, including sulfites, nitrates or nitrites; any ingredient known to contain higher levels of heavy metals or toxic residues than permitted by the government; and many value-added or further-processed ingredients.

For organic-poultry producers, the difficulty starts with the feed. “Smaller producers have had better luck with this. The larger producers run into issues of how to source enough organic feed that has also not been genetically modified. For this, you have to get farmers to commit a year in advance,” says DePippo. The reason companies like College Hill Poultry of Fredericksburg, PA, could launch all-natural, antibiotic-free Raised Right™ chicken, is that they had a head start — the company was already raising organic chickens when the regulations came into being. Not only that, but the family that owns College Hill also owns its organic-feed supplier, ensuring a continuous, controlled supply stream.

Niche marketing
Niche-market birds, such as squab, pheasant and duckling, are another specialty category. The squab market started in the Asian community, but in the last decade, chefs in white-tablecloth restaurants have started to add the bird to the menu. In fact, the market for squab has quadrupled in the last 15 years. “It’s held in high esteem by European chefs,” says Bob Shipley, president, Squab Producers of California, Modesto, CA. He adds, however, “they are expensive and a lot of people don’t eat squab because it’s pigeon. It makes it a hard sell for chefs.”

Because of the way squab is raised, incidents of foodborne illness from the bird are almost nonexistent. “One of the reasons that’s true is because squab farmers use good bacteria to crowd out the bad bacteria. Squabs use their feces to put nests together and the birds develop immunities. There is no overexposure, so there is no disease,” says Shipley. “The joke is that we are doing everything so wrong that it’s right. The squabs are also raised in uncrowded conditions.”

While no flavored squab products exist at this time, boneless breasts and European sleeve-boned birds — which are boned before evisceration — provide a value-added option. Because it’s such a small bird, chefs like to stuff squab from the neck. The restaurant at the Palomar Hotel in San Francisco serves half squab breasts with the wing bones attached, prepared in its own stock with shaved almonds.

Other specialty birds include Petit Poulet, a specially bred, all-natural chicken that is smaller than conventional chickens and weighs 1.95 to 2.05 lbs., and black Silkie Bantam chickens. “There’s a lot to be said for the Bantam chicken’s medicinal properties. They are high in specific amino acids and a lot of people in the Chinese community come to get them to help treat colds,” says Shipley. These birds are only about 1.25 to 1.50 lbs., but not young, so they are very flavorful.

Other niche markets include pheasant and duckling, which are also geared to upscale restaurants. California-raised pheasants are unique in that they are raised outdoors, eat all-natural grains and roam, resulting in a moist, natural, flavorful bird. They are marketed between 22 and 24 weeks old to prevent tough meat and excess fat. Most are sold frozen and individually vacuum-packed in film. Pheasants are available whole, in half breasts or as boneless, full breasts. A common application is sausage.

Previously, duckling was sold almost exclusively whole, but in the last 10 years, the industry has gone from selling 5% percent of the birds as parts up to 40% percent, according to The Duckling Council (www.duckling.org). Even white-tablecloth restaurants are using more sliced and de-boned products. The trade group notes that 95% of duckling consumed in the United States are of the White Pekin breed. And although duck has a reputation of having a high fat content, today’s birds are bred for leanness; the fat and calorie count of skinless White Pekin duckling breast falls right between skinless turkey and chicken breast. The duckling breast has 140 calories and 2.5 grams of fat per 100 grams cooked meat, vs. chicken’s 165 calories and 4 grams of fat and the turkey’s 135 calories and 1 gram of fat, according to the USDA.

In an innovative move, the duckling industry has turned to e-commerce, selling duckling online — and not only whole birds, but complete meal kits that offer consumers an entire dinner with flowers, wine and all of the other elements for an elegant dinner at home. “In the next several years, you’ll start to see a number of duckling convenience products in the retail, foodservice and e-commerce settings. Products will include preroasted and precooked duckling that just needs to be heated and served. This convenience will put White Pekin duckling in the arena with other quick-to-serve foods,” says Dick Jones, president, Woodland Farms, a subsidiary of Maple Leaf Farms and treasurer for The Duckling Council.

Marinades make it happen
Value-added products have been a tremendous boon to the poultry industry, but they would not have been possible without today’s technology. While practices like marinating, breading and spice rubs have existed for a very long time, mass-producing products creates unique problems that science now can help solve.

Commercial marinating, an internal seasoning process, uses vacuum tumblers or injection systems to impart the flavors. Processors typically inject seasonings into bone-in poultry products and tumble boneless products. In addition, gums, phosphate and starches all aid in moisture retention. However, marinating can present problems that new ingredient technologies can help rectify.

Phosphate technology offers many advantages to processed products. A specially formulated phosphate from Astaris LLC, St. Louis, dissolves quickly in the presence of salt and helps enhance taste and consistency. “With most marination solutions, you have to make sure that all ingredients are dissolved before you add the next ingredient. This phosphate allows you to dissolve all of the ingredients at once. You don’t have to worry about what order you add ingredients,” says Nancy Stachiw, director of tech services and application research. The phosphate is also used in spice mixes to enhance taste and consistency.

Recently, there has been renewed interest in low-sodium products. “Just in the last couple of months, I have had a lot of calls from people asking about low-sodium products,” says Rick Bosch, technical service fellow with Astaris. “One of our products is a potassium phosphate that’s especially good for low-sodium diets. Our aim is to try to bring innovation into a line that already has a long history of use.”

Soy proteins also provide benefits. When added to marinades, isolated soy proteins and soy protein concentrates improve moisture retention in the cooked poultry. “Soy protein helps improve succulence in poultry products,” says Philip Witte, director of applied technology for the Solae Company, St. Louis. “Without a good functional ingredient to help hold onto moisture when a product is being held for service, it can be dry and lose juiciness.” Rotisserie chickens, for example, are often held for 2 hours in a grocery-store deli. Chickens with soy added to the marinade can stay juicy throughout the holding period and remain that way when taken home for dinner.

These soy proteins can also help improve the quality of dark meat. “Dark meat is both a darker color and softer than white meat. When soy protein is added to these products in formulation, it both lightens up the color and makes the meat less soft,” Witte says. Whey protein offers a similar benefit; when added to deli-style poultry meats, it helps bind water and aids emulsification and adhesion of the meat after chopping and blending.

Working with flavors is another boon to marinades, since flavors are easier to manipulate than fresh, raw ingredients and less likely to pose food-safety or spoilage issues. Certain natural ingredients, like lemon, for example, can degrade poultry due to their acidity; while formulating with a lemon flavor adds flavor without the undesirable properties.

Transglutamase, an enzyme, cross-links the amino acids glutamine and lysine, forming covalent bonds. This aids in binding proteins together and enhancing structure. “Probably one of the better applications is taking trimmings and forming into a casing or a block, then shaping the block into a desired shape,” says Tony Payne, Ph.D., associate director of application development, Ajinomoto U.S.A., Inc., Paramus, NJ. “One can take a chicken-thigh medallion, flavor the inside before it is shaped, and make it into a consistently sized portion that will cook evenly. It works very well in a fast-food situation.”

Transglutamase, available as a liquid or powder, can also be used to coat the outside of poultry to help other protein products adhere to it, e.g., bacon wrapped around a chicken breast. “Because the enzyme is cross-linked, it’s not thermally reversible. A gelatin would run off; the enzyme stays put,” Payne adds.

Other companies offer premixed marinades either in standard formulations or customized. GrillMaster Marinades, produced by Newly Weds Foods, Chicago, impart grilled charcoal flavor to foods, without the grill.

Red Arrow Products Company LLC, Manitowoc, WI, also manufactures smoke, grill and roast flavors. “Our Grillin’ line of products allows poultry processors to make products that have a grill taste to them, within the constraints of their current system. With grill flavors being available in oil, water-soluble and dry forms, this allows the producer options on how to create their own grill poultry profile,” says Melissa Ventura, CEC, corporate research chef.

These grilling flavors have the added advantage of helping prevent oxidation in poultry products. “The phenols found in liquid smoke play a role in flavoring the product, as well as keeping it from oxidizing. The melanoidins, reaction products of the Maillard browning reaction, are also strong antioxidants, giving liquid smoke a two-fold effect in oxidation prevention,” explains Ed Emmerson, technical services manager at the company. The products also aid in browning.

Recent research conducted at Clemson University, SC, has proven that honey also has an antioxidant effect, also as a result of the Maillard reaction. A concentration of up to 15% by weight offers the antioxidant advantage without making products overly sweet. Honey also inhibits bacterial growth on meat surfaces, thus aiding in shelf life. Rosemary extract, which has similar preservative attributes, naturally safeguards against oxidative rancidity. Antioxidant properties in both of these substances, as well as products like dried-plum purée, prevent warmed-over flavor (WOF) in poultry, created when products have been cooked and require reheating. See the November 2000 Food Product Design Foodservice Focus, “Fighting Warmed-Over Flavor,” for more information.

Some products enhance flavors without otherwise changing the flavor. Monosodium glutamate (MSG), which research has vindicated from some bad press, amplifies savory flavors. Two other flavor enhancers, sodium 5'-inosinate (IMP) and disodium 5'-guanylate (GMP) also enhance the savory, or umami, taste and work synergistically with MSG. Product designers can also look at autolyzed yeast, and hydrolyzed proteins to increase savory flavor. Spray-dried chicken and turkey powders produced from the broth of cooked birds intensify the flavor of the poultry products, without adding a different flavor note.

The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has published the final rule, “Ingredients That May Be Designated as Natural Flavors, Natural Flavorings, Flavors, or Flavorings When Used in Meat or Poultry Products.” The rule defines ingredients (spices, spice extractives, and essential oils) that poultry manufacturers can label as “natural flavors” or “flavors.” It also requires that certain ingredients, such as dried chicken stock, autolyzed yeast, and hydrolyzed proteins, be listed on the label by their common or usual names, because they have other purposes beyond flavor, such as flavor enhancers, emulsifiers, stabilizers and binders. The source of hydrolyzed protein also must be specified on the label: for example, “hydrolyzed soy protein” or “hydrolyzed whey protein.”

Topical seasoning also adds value to poultry products. Seasoning applied to the surface of poultry can take the form of a spice rub, sauce or glaze. “The drumstick, for example, is fully cooked, dipped in a glaze and then quick-frozen. You can also put a spice coating on the outside of the glaze, adding even more flavor,” says Russell. This kind of seasoning system especially helps with battered and breaded products, since flavors tend to cook off when deep fat-fried.

Manufacturers can use texture to add another level of interest to their poultry products. Batters, coatings and breadings add crunch and a pleasing mouthfeel. Coatings may take the form of tempura batters, cornmeal batters, or coarse to fine grades of breading, and include cereals and other grains.

“Texture plays a very important function when you are talking about coating. It’s also visual appearance,” says Andrew Oxley, director of R&D, Kerry Coatings Group, Beloit, WI. “You can make a product crunchy or crispy, or softer. There is a big bucket of ideas to play with.” One of the approaches he takes is to try to match the coating to the flavor of the product. This enables anyone to identify the flavor of the product just by looking at it. “For example, if someone had a honey-mustard-flavored item, I might coat it with yellow pieces of crisp rice,” he says. High flavor and high visual impact both play into successful value-added products.

Playing it safe
One of the biggest issues facing the food industry in general, and the poultry industry in particular, is food safety. Campylobacter, Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, and Listeria monocytogenes all pose a threat in poultry products. Food processors employ a number of methods to reduce and control bacterial growth in fresh and packaged products.

The first level of control starts with the animal feed. Putting certain substances in feed can help control the development of pathogens in livestock. According to a TIC Gums, Belcamp, MD, report, gums such as xanthan, guar and pectin have been found to compete with pathogens in the intestinal tracts of animals, preventing the bacteria from attaching and thriving.

Once in the factory, animal carcasses are treated with a variety of rinses to control bacteria. Food-safety regulations require that all bird carcasses be treated; a chlorinated, chilled water bath is most common. However, it is an expensive program since, after just one use, the water must be discarded and a new batch cooled to 38ºF, a process that consumes a large quantity of water and electricity.

Several newer technologies promise to augment or replace the chlorine process. One consists of an alkaline treatment of whole carcasses using a pH 12 rinse. One such rinse is built around trisodium phosphate, while another, newer rinse is phosphate-free. “These solutions accomplish the goal of reducing salmonella. Chlorine is neutralized by organic matter and doesn’t penetrate the fat. The alkaline rinse penetrates the fat. This rinse is a pretreatment before the birds go into the chill tank. You have clean birds going in,” says Bill King, director for food protection, Rhodia, Cranbury, NJ. While the process requires more citric acid in the chill tanks than conventional treatments, it does dramatically reduce the incidence of salmonella bacteria. “It especially reduces reprocessing,” says King. “If there is any fecal matter on bird carcasses, they have to stop the line.”

A much newer technology still under investigation is the use of ozone as a disinfecting agent in food processing. A 1993 study conducted in a California chicken plant (“Recycling of poultry chill water using ozone,” A.L. Waldroup, R.E. Hierholzer and R.H. Forsythe, Applied Poultry Science, 1993) found that prewashing chickens with ozonated water is as effective as the chlorinated-water rinse in reducing salmonella. The prewash system did need to be well-enclosed and well-ventilated, continuous, in-line, “in-and-out” and supplied with ozonated water.

USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced a new set of regulations in June 2003 targeting the packaged- and cooked-poultry industry. This interim final rule requires that “all establishments that produce RTE (ready-to-eat) products that are exposed to the environment after cooking to develop written programs to control L. monocytogenes and to verify the effectiveness of those programs through testing.”

“This final rule will be in development for 2 years,” explains King. “It says poultry processors have to come up with post-cooking treatment to reduce or kill Listeria on meats.” Processors must choose from three alternatives. Alternative one requires that plants use both a post-lethality treatment and a growth inhibitor. This alternative will be subject to FSIS verification of the post-lethality treatment’s effectiveness. Plants choosing alternative two must use either a post-lethality treatment or a growth inhibitor, and will be under more constant scrutiny by FSIS. Alternative three allows sanitation measures only, but establishments opting for this alternative will be subject to the most frequent inspection.

“Alternative one is a HAACP concept. An all-natural food protectant, a niacin and egg-white lysozyme, kills Listeria on contact and will continue to kill,” says King. “It works with a growth-inhibition process. And, it’s a low-cost technology.” He adds, “There are not a lot of ingredient tools out there for cooked product. We recommend that they use lactate diacetate if they can stand the taste and use the lysozyme product as the kill step.” The company is testing another technology and is looking at other tools that would be growth-inhibitor steps. “The tolerance level for Listeria is zero. We are going to wait and see what technologies develop,” he concludes.

Protective packaging
Another level of bacterial control occurs in the packaging of cooked products. In most foods, the surface growth of microorganisms is one of the major causes of food spoilage. Heat sterilization and direct addition of antimicrobials can minimize or eliminate microbial growth. In many foods processed by conventional thermal means, such as pasteurization and sterilization, the foods are sealed in packages and then thermally processed.

Some of the newest packaging research has studied the use of “active packaging,” antimicrobial edible films that release substances onto the food surface that inhibit microbial growth. These substances can also be incorporated into or coated onto the regular food-packaging materials. Antimicrobial agents tested so far include ethanol-extracted propolis, silver-substituted zeolite, fungicides such as imazalil and benomyl, organic acids and their anhydrides, and bacteriocins. Because no one agent can cover the requirements for all food, various substances are under study. One source that seems to have antibacterial properties against a wide spectrum of microorganisms is basil, which contains the active components methyl chavicol, eugenol linalool, camphor and methyl cinnamate.

Nationwide, poultry producers engage in the battle to not only protect the consumer public against microorganisms, but also to satisfy consumer demand as the populace flocks to stores in search of a flavorful, quick-and-easy meal option. When it comes to value-added, poultry rules the roost.

Nancy Backas is a Chicago-based writer and chef with a bachelor’s degree in foods in business from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has been writing about the food industry for more than 20 years.

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