Meat+Poultry - August 2019 - 59

Bell & Evans celebrates 125 years, and
champions air chilling over traditional methods
BY K E I T H LO R I A | m e a t p o u l t r y @ s o s l a n d.c o m

IT 

Photos: Bell & Evans

was 125 years ago when Howard
H. Bell first started breeding and
shipping squabs by train from his farm
outside of Camden, New Jersey, to butcher
shops throughout New York City. It wasn't long
before he joined forces with fellow poultryman
Carlton Evans to market chickens and other
poultry. Soon after, Bell & Evans fast earned a
strong reputation in the poultry business.
Scott Sechler has served as owner of the
company for the past 35 years, and takes
pride in Bell & Evans being America's oldest
branded chicken company with an established
reputation as the best in the market. During
his time running the Fredericksburg,
Pennsylvainia-based company, he's introduced
"all natural" chicken to the market and also
championed the production method of air
chilling vs. immersion chilling.
"I consider my biggest contributions to
be developing the first all-natural chicken
without antibiotics more than 20 years ago and
developing the highest quality organic chicken
available today," Sechler says. "The secret
to success has been building our business
model by thinking like our consumer. I am
our consumer. I produce food that I want to
eat, and over the years, I've found that most
consumers want the same thing."
For Sechler, cost is never the deciding
factor if quality is sacrificed.
"I won't allow that in my business," he
says. "We want to feel good about what we
eat, and the details matter. How the product
looks and tastes, how it's packaged, how
the animals are raised and cared for, how
employees are treated, how local resources
are used, and how the company supports its
community - it all matters. Doing the right
thing is the right thing to do."

AIR CHILLING TECH
Air-chilled chicken is cooled by passing the
birds through several chambers where cold,
purified air is circulated to cool the meat,

resulting in no added moisture, stronger flavor
and less chance for contamination.
Sechler is a big believer in air chilling and
the system Bell & Evans utilizes is a single
level of track that its birds travel along for
almost three hours, through three cooling
chambers, until they are chilled.
"Each chamber has controlled temperature
and humidity," he says. "Air chilling is a
significant contributor to the tenderness and
flavor of the meat as compared to the cheaper
conventional water chilling system that
submerges the birds in a cold-water bath that
is heavily laden with chlorine to control the
inherent bacteria."
He believes the value of 100 percent air
chill is that the customer purchases chicken
without retained chlorinated water weight, that
has been tenderized through a slow chilling
process and has more flavor because its juices
haven't been diluted by a water bath.
"We are one of very few producers in
America that produce a true 100 percent
air-chilled product. Product quality is the
value," Sechler says. "Slowly air chilling
chicken is like dry aging beef except that the
time window is much shorter to safely cool
chicken. Water chilling takes about a third of
the time as air chilling, a third of the amount
of facility space and costs a quarter of what
100 percent air chilling costs, but you lose
product quality."
In October 2018, the company installed a
chilling tunnel for livers, hearts, necks and
gizzards that utilizes the same refrigeration
technology as its air chill system, becoming the
only US retailer to sell 100 percent air chilled
liver, hearts and gizzards.
"When we open our new harvesting plant
in 2021, we will actually build a conveyor line
within our air chill system to chill our giblets
with the chickens like they do in Europe,"
Sechler says. "Even our paws are air chilled
using a CO2 system whereas most producers
use water chill for those as well."

"Slowly air
chilling
chicken is
like dry aging
beef except
that the time
window is
much shorter
to safely cool
chicken."
- SCOTT SECHLER

Bell & Evans has been in
the chicken business for
125 years. The company
believes air chilling
produces a higher quality
product than the use of
other chilling methods
during production.

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