MEAT+POULTRY - September 2015 - 14

WA S H I N G T O N

A chicken by another name
It has been said that the wheels of government turn very
slowly. Sometimes it seems as if they never turn at all.
A good example of how change takes a long time, but
eventually happens, is the effort underway now to change
the definition of a "roaster" chicken. In other words, what
a chicken must be to qualify as a "roaster" in the eyes of
the US Dept. of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection
Service. This may seem like semantics and nothing more.
The fact is, it is a lot more. The poultry industry has good
reason to be pushing for these changes. But change in the
heavily government regulated poultry and meat industry
can take a long time.
About 18 months ago, USDA
toughened the standard for a
"roasting chicken" to be a young
chicken between eight and 12
weeks of age, with a ready-tocook carcass weight of 5 lbs. or
more, with tender meat and a
breastbone cartilage less flexible
than a broiler or fryer. Seeing this
coming, the National Chicken
Council (NCC) submitted a
petition asking FSIS to eliminate
the minimum age and raise the
minimum weight to 5.5 lbs. NCC
also asked the agency to put
The poultry
enforcement of the new standards
industry has
on hold until the changes the trade
good reason to association wanted could be put
be pushing for into effect, or at least ruled on.
Traditionally, roaster chickens
these changes.
are larger than broilers and fryers,
and therefore, are usually roasted
whole. They typically have a stronger and richer flavor,
which becomes apparent when they are roasted.
But NCC believed that raising the age and the weight
of roasting birds would not be of help to the industry in
selling "roasting chickens." In fact, the change would
actually hurt the poultry industry by disrupting the
production and marketing of whole chickens, confuse
consumers and require the reclassification of most
chickens that are now marketed as "roasters."
Michael Brown, NCC president, says improvements
in chicken genetics, weight gains, overall plumpness and
quality of chickens, improved breeding and management,
mean many roasting chickens are now on the very edge of

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MEAT+ POULTRY | 09.15 | www.meatpoultry.com

the age range of the scheduled definition of the chicken.
"When proposing the scheduled definition, the agency
considered data on days-to-market that is now years out of
date," NCC said.
By eliminating the minimum age for roasting chickens,
there would be no need to change the regulation every
so often in order to reflect continuing improvements in
days-to-market. Requiring roasting chickens to be grown
to eight weeks will require more feed, housing, grow-out
labor and management, as companies unnecessarily
prolong the grow-out period in order to comply with the
time-to-market threshold. One of the major costs involved
in raising chickens, according to Brown, is feed.
And in the view of the chicken trade association, USDA
is holding onto an old idea of how long it takes to raise a
chicken to be marketed that is really getting in the way of
the economics of the business today. Requiring chickens
to be "held" for a minimum number of days raises the
costs of raising the chickens, and eventually the cost per
pound consumers will pay.
Three years ago, according to NCC, there were 200
million roasting chickens marketed with a ready-to-cook
total weight of 1.35 billion lbs., about 3.5 percent by weight
of the federally inspected young chicken meat. Most of the
chicken is individually packaged at the processing plant
where the chickens were slaughtered, and are marketed
through grocery stores and other retail outlets. Very few
are sold at restaurants or other foodservice operations.
Based on a survey of processor members, NCC
estimates if the rule isn't changed, fewer than 10 percent
of these kinds of chickens will make it to market,
disrupting the "roasting chicken" that many consumers
like and have enjoyed for decades.
So last month, FSIS issued a notice responding to
the NCC petition. After consulting with the Agricultural
Marketing Service (AMS), FSIS is now in the process
of developing a proposed rule to eliminate the age
requirement for "roaster" chickens. And while the
rulemaking is under construction, FSIS is telling its
inspectors in chicken plants not to object if chickens
younger than eight weeks of age continue to be labeled
and marketed as "roasters" as long as these birds meet all
the other physical characteristics of a roaster in the USDA
standard of identity, including weighing 5 lbs. or more.
It may take time, but occasionally government responds
to arguments and requests from industries it regulates.
B E R N A R D S H I R E | m e a t p o u l t r y @ s o s l a n d.c o m
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MEAT+POULTRY - September 2015

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