Mary’s Chickens, Turkeys and Ducks

FARTHER AFIELD
Tom Willey
T& D Willey Farms

Consumer Reports (January, 2010) has just published noteworthy results from their most recent of periodic surveys examining pathogen contamination of chicken in the American marketplace. Unlike CR’s previous 2007 survey, this time both store and name branded organic chickens demonstrated significantly lower levels of salmonella and campylobacter contamination than did two of the three major conventional brands.

Most significant for our CSA members was the finding that, comparing all categories, air chilled organic brands “proved especially clean”; our local Mary’s chickens being one.

This region’s dominant conventional producer, Foster Farms’ birds tested clean of both pathogens only 16% of the time, while organic name brands were found clean at a 47% frequency. The key appears to be recent adoption by some organic poultry processors, including Mary’s, of air chilled technology, long used in Europe but uncommon until now in the U.S. It follows the same principle as our farm’s spray washing potatoes on screens rather than dragging them through a common water bath that often serves as a spoilage organism inoculant.

Mary’s air chilled system, installed at considerable expense, conveys slaughtered birds on a circuitous hanging conveyor, traveling at a snail’s pace through several chill rooms while they are blown on by cold, moist air. An offset conveyor design prevents birds from dripping on each other and cross contaminating.

Conventional common bath chilling causes a chicken to retain up to 10% of its shelf weight as absorbed, chlorinated, cross-contaminated water. Mary’s full line of poultry products, including the new “California Bronze” pastured chickens, are available at Kristina’s Natural Ranch Market in Fresno. Fewer Mary’s products are carried by The Market. Both these local, family owned grocers host CSA pick up sites and their enthusiastic support for locally produced foods is both remarkable and deserving of our patronage.

I met the Madera-based Pitman Family, three-generation poultry producers, some fifteen years back when we moved our farm to this community. They are an excellent example of conventional producers who perceived public criticism of industrial practice as an opportunity rather than a threat, leading them to found Mary’s Chickens, Turkeys and Ducks. Mary and Rick are long time CSA members, good friends and local farming innovators in whom we can take pride.
–Tom Willey

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