Facilities and Equipment
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The Center of Excellence for Poultry Science
A Stein oven on loan to the Center for Excellence for Poultry Science is used to evaluate thermal processing of value-added poultry products
Within the Center of Excellence for Poultry Science are various facilities and equipment for food processing and evaluation. The Poultry Pilot Processing Plant is a 12,000 square-foot facility with equipment to process poultry through slaughter and evisceration, with deboning capability.
The plant has equipment for product injection, vacuum marination, batter/breader application, frying, smoking, and controlled humidity cooking. This equipment includes electrical stun, bleed tunnel, dunking type scalder, rotary drum picker, manual evisceration line, commercial giblet chiller, Stein pilot-scale air impingement oven and an Alkar smokehouse for processed cooked meats.
Also available are commercial-scale broiler grow-out houses, battery brooders, hatchery and feed mill with pelleting facilities.
A central analytical laboratory provides standard analytical procedures and includes poultry microbiological facilities with several standard microbial incubators, modified atmosphere incubators and the Gene-Trak nonisotopic rapid detection system for Salmonella.
Animal Science facilities and equipment include USDA approved slaughter equipment, meat fabrication room, coolers, walk-in freezer, band saw, grinder, stuffer, chopper, vacuum packager, scales, patty machine, convection oven, temperature data logger, shear testing device and spectrocolorimeter.