The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1906-02-09
PRESERVED CHICKEN.
HOW POULTRY is CANNED IN
MEXICAN PACKING HOUSES.


of Ten a Minute-In the Cooking
Room-Deft Handed Girls Strip the
Meat from the Bones-Turkeys,
Geese and Ducks Canned.
Imagine chickens being cleaned,
cooked and shot into tin cans at the
rate of 5000 pounds an hour through
out the working day, and you have
fair idea of the poultry canning
industry at only one of Chicago's
great packing houses This concern
in it's rush season has prepared near
ly a million pounds of chickens a
week, and it is estimated that in the
United States. more than 75,000,000
pounds of canned chicken, valued in
excess of $7,5OO,0OO, are put up every
year, and the output is constantly in
creasing.
Some houses kill and dress at the
rate of ten fowls a minute. If not
intended for immediate use the poul-
try is frozen hard, the temperature
in the coolers being gradually re-
duced to zero. At that temperature
Gamers declare that all poultry may
be kept for months without the
slightest deterioration, provided that
when it is ''thawed out" the tempera-
ture is not increased too rapidly. The
general method of thawirg is to take
the stock by degrees from freezing"
coolers to warm" ones, where the
temperature of the latter IS a few de-
grees above the freezing point
After being thawed out and taken
from the coolers the heads and legs
are severed and the fowls are drawn
by girls, who also remove the pin
feathers which have escaped the OBJ
servation of the commission house
employees. One thousand fowls an
hour, or nearly twenty a minute, are
handled by the fifty persons.
The poultry is now ready for the
cooking room, a great department in
which are scores of large tanks for
all kinds of canning. These tanks
are made of steel alloy, almost the
height Of man and four or five feet
across. A heavy metal cover, with
a rubber gasket and large steel
clamps, covers the top. These recep-
tacles are filed with the chickens
previously cut into halves-and the
tops screwed down. Steam is admit
ted at the bottom of the tank, passes
through the mass of meat and finally
escapes from vent at the top. The
steam is admitted under high pres
sure and permeates every particle of
the fowl, SO that the thousands of
pounds of meat are almost thorough
ly cooked in an hour or a little more,
depending upon the quality or age of
the chickens.
The next process is to remove the
bones, for no poultry is canned with
out being shred into small particles
or ground by machinery. Several girls,
with white aprons and caps, remove
the bones. They seize the fowl by
the drumsticks and with a quick pull
remove the flesh from each leg; next
with their knives and fingers they
draw the meat from the halves of the
body. Then they scrape the inside
Of the skeleton and remove the bits
Of meat which may have remained on
the bones, for nothing goes to waste
in packing house. The whole pro-
cess requires less time than it takes
to explain it.
This meat, now in masses on the
tables in front of the girls, is carried
over endless belts into baskets, and
is ready to be treated in the several
ways used in preparing the different
classes of canned goods. The most
popular article is simply homeless"
chicken, without seasoning, except
salt, although other brands are pre-
pared with spices and also in COM
bination with other meats.
The meat, as stripped from the
bones, falls down a chute to floor
below, ON tables surrounded by other
girls. These take the pieces of flesh
and shred them into bits about quar-
ter of an inch wide, and three or four
inches long, mixing the white and
dark pieces together and picking out
any small bits of bones. This shred
ded meat Is passed along over more
endless belts, from which the young
women lift it and place it in one-half
and one-pound cans, the latter being
more in favor. They pack the meat
firmly, and other girls place parch-
ment paper over the tops and put the
tin covers on. The receptacles pass
into rows of machines, which with
one quick turn solder round the tops
of the tins.
The cans are now placed in steel
baskets, holding 100 or more, and
these baskets are inserted in tanks
similar to those used in the first cook
ing. The meat is heated by stea.-
thirty or forty minutes and when the
cans are taken out the tops are
punctured to allow the steam and any
gases in the meat to escape. After
this, men with soldering irons go over
each basket, plugging the little holes.
AS a test to determine whether any
opening remains elsewhere in the can