Product off complaints (Chicken)

Please can somebody help me and give some advice......

I work at a chicken factory who supply major retailers with portioned chickjen pieces. Our complaints are mostly off's and to be honest sometimes spiral out of control.

Our checks we do do not show any issues i.e. Leaker checks, hygiene swabs, temperature checks.

Can anybody advise what else to look into to help reduce this level.

Thanks

Dear aps,

"Leakers" refers to canned goods ??

I presume by "offs" you mean unsatisfactory smell ??

If the former, first step probably wide scope - Organoleptic analysis - raw material in / line / end product. Then re-evaluate the controls.

If not the former, what is the defect ??

Rgds / Charles.C

Can you put anything back to the retailer, in the sense of traceability in transport chain temperature, storage of goods prior to sale etc? (Especially when they have been spiralling lately and going by the recent warm weather in the UK?)

I personally think some supermarkets don't always give chilled products the conditions required, but if there's any complaints from customers they push it straight back to the producer.

Dear poppysnoss,

Good points. Are we talking about chilled or frozen goods ?? I had assumed the latter.
Come in Aps ???

Rgds / Charles.C

Dear poppysnoss,

Good points. Are we talking about chilled or frozen goods ?? I had assumed the latter.
Come in Aps ???

Rgds / Charles.C

APS to earth lol

Chilled chicken portions i.e. Breast meat, inner fillets, legs, thighs etc.

Thanks
APS

Dear (Major Tom) Aps,

Thks for info. How about the other queries ?

eg "offs" = ?
potential problems post "shipment" ?

Rgds / Charles.C

As a consumer, I sometimes notice an odour to chicken a couple of days before the BBD which screams coliform contamination to me. Have you checked the evisceration process? I'm not familiar with meat processing but I would guess if there is a significant cross contamination it could lead to early spoilage? I've no idea if the carcasses are cleaned or processed in any way post evisceration or whether you rely on good technique?

Also I would, if you don't do it already, keep some packs of each production run in a refrigeration unit which mimics consumer fridges (ie 8 degrees is on a good day!) Then check the packs yourself.

Are you gas flushing? If so, you'd be surprised how many microleakers you can have in seamingly intact packages. You can get fairly good leak checking equipment which detects CO2 to check for these and some are now available in line, although they're not always fast enough (yet) for modern processing.

It is a possibility, especially in this weather that it could be down to poor storage at stores and with consumers but unfortunately that's not an excuse which washes with the retailers and also it might just be highlighting a contamination / leak issue which is being hidden at other times of the year. It might be worth looking at the data and looking for seasonal spikes anyway just to give yourself some breathing space but I wouldn't stop even if the data strongly suggests a summer effect.

Please can somebody help me and give some advice......

I work at a chicken factory who supply major retailers with portioned chickjen pieces. Our complaints are mostly off's and to be honest sometimes spiral out of control.

Our checks we do do not show any issues i.e. Leaker checks, hygiene swabs, temperature checks.

Can anybody advise what else to look into to help reduce this level.

Thanks

Hi Aps

Off products are normally related to:
Poor Product Quality
Excessive Shelf Life
Temperature Abuse

Your internal shelf life testing should give you an indication of whether the chicken will be satisfactory at the end of life. Make sure the temperatures you hold at reflect your market. If your results do not indicate an issue then you should be looking at the chill chain. Data logging the product from production to store can be a usefull tool. Also analyse your complaints and identify anything that sticks out in terms of complaints per million units(cpmu). I have previously identifed problem stores and found my product to be held at 20 C in a unit that was supposed to be a chiller!
If you need a complaint analyser template let me know and I'll send you a template.

Regards,

Tony