BAHA checks out disease in Cayo chickens
Whether you like it fried, stewed, baked or barbecued, chances are chicken is on your menu more than any other source of protein. That’s why any possible threat to Belize’s favourite bird is not taken lightly. This morning I joined agricultural health officials in Spanish Lookout as they investigated what is hopefully only a blip on the food safety radar.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
Every day thousands of chickens, from one hundred and thirty five farms in Spanish Lookout and nearby villages are delivered to Quality Poultry in the Cayo district for slaughter and processing. But on Tuesday, inspectors from the Belize Agricultural Health Authority noticed that there was something wrong with a number of the animals.
Michael DeShield, Food Safety Manager, BAHA
?A bunch of birds came in, were not showing any kind of clinical signs when they were alive. But when we running through the slaughter line, we started noticing that there were a bunch of more fluid in abdomen than normal and some of the lungs were a little bit more congested. So the birds that we saw, we condemned right away and we took off the line. But there was more frequency of that happening so we basically stopped the line and then we looked at the rest of the birds until we could determine what was going on. It was just a little bit more condemnations than we would expect.?
Henry Wiebe, Processing Manager
?That flock contained sixteen thousand birds and we?ve slaughtered about seven thousand or eight thousand birds of those.?
Janelle Chanona
?And those have been sealed off??
Henry Wiebe, Processing Manager
?Those have been sealed off and the rest have been brought back to the farm to be given treatment.?
According to Quality Poultry processing manager, Henry Wiebe, eight hundred birds had to condemned while the other carcasses remain sealed off in the factory?s freezers and will not be used until samples taken by BAHA show that they are disease free.
After initial investigations of the farm in question, it is suspected that unhygienic practices in the barn are the source of the sickness. Wiebe says close working relations between the plant and BAHA ensure that their product is safe for consumption.
Henry Wiebe, Processing Manager, Quality Products
?The chicken is being hanged on a chain and it?s passed through the scalder and being plucked. After being plucked that?s where the inspection is taking place and if they see anything curious especially when they open the carcass, they would probably see something wrong and that?s when BAHA would take down the chicken and inspect it further.?
Wiebe says safety measures have already been put in place in an attempt to avoid similar cases in the future.
Henry Wiebe
?We just had a meeting this morning and we decided that we will have a person that will be in charge of going out on the farm and probably kill a bird and do a post-mortem for every farm before we bring them to the plant.”
And according to BAHA?s Food Safety Manager, Belize?s favourite bird can stay on the menu.
Michael DeShield, BAHA
?It?s still safe to eat chicken and eat chicken, eat more chicken and beef as well.?
According to Quality Poultry, approximately twenty-three thousand chickens are slaughtered daily.
