FOOD VALUE AND USES OF POULTRY. 15 



and progressive retailers sometimes even use refrigerated show cases. 

 The consumer should insist that the birds be kept in a cold place 

 until they are delivered to him, and should use them as soon as 

 possible after they reach his home. 



Sometimes, especially in hot weather, poultry which is to be sold 

 as fresh — that is, within a few weeks of killing — is frozen before it is 

 shipped. As a general rule, however, the term frozen poultry is used 

 to describe that which has been held at a very low temperature (some- 

 times below 0° F.) until the birds are frozen very hard, and which 

 is then stored at a temperature below freezing for several months— 

 sometimes for many months. Dealers with cold-storage warehouses 

 buy up large quantities of chickens when they are most plentiful, 

 freeze them, and carry them over to be marketed during the next off 

 season. 



When poultrymen first began to freeze poultry it was claimed that 

 no changes took place in the flesh while it was held at these low tem- 

 peratures. Experiments conducted by the Bureau of Chemistry of 

 the United States Department of Agriculture under commercial con- 

 ditions and with the cooperation of poultry warehousemen * have not 

 confirmed this. Chemical and bacteriological changes do take place, 

 though they may be too slight to be noted by sight, smell, or touch, 

 even when the carcass is thawed. These changes depend very largely 

 on the way in which the bird was dressed and handled before the freez- 

 ing, as well as on the length of time it is held in the frozen condition. 

 Most of the objection to the frozen poultry of the past arose from 

 careless preparation for storage and from the refreezing of thawed 

 poultry by poultry dealers. In the past there was also a tendency, 

 when the market conditions were bad, for dealers to freeze "fresh" 

 stock on the verge of decay, that it might not be a total loss. This 

 practice has injured the entire poultry industry because it substituted 

 an article of poor quality for a good one. With the better under- 

 standing of cold storage such occurrences are becoming less and less 

 frequent and frozen poultry is, therefore, improving. 



The length of time during which poultry properly prepared for 

 storage can be kept hard frozen without injury to quality is fairly 

 well known. Researches in the Department of Agriculture have 

 shown that such birds may be kept for 9 to 10 months and still be not 

 only wholesome but of good table quality. This makes the season for 

 cold-storage birds coincide with the seasons of natural scarcity and 

 insures a continuous supply, especially of younger birds, such as 

 broilers and tender roasting chickens. The change most likely to be 

 noticed in a bird held for a considerable period in cold storage is a loss 

 of juiciness in the flesh, but it is not always easy to detect the difference 



ill. S. Dept. Agr., Bur. Chem. Circ. 64 (1911). 



