August 28, 2006

Organic poultry plant opens in US state of North Carolina

Elite Foods LLC, an organic turkey and chicken company, has opened a poultry processing plant in Troy, North Carolina.

The 38,000-square-foot plant would produce Alison's Family Farms line of all-natural poultry products, allowing the company to expand its processing operations.

At full capacity, the plant is expected to process 60,000 chickens and 5,000 turkeys weekly.

The chickens are vegetable-fed, antibiotic-free and reared without the use of steroids or growth hormones, company president D. Bruce Cuddy said, adding that all their product range are certified "Humanely Raised and Handled."

The plant itself has also been designed to be environmentally friendly as it uses air chilling and lower amounts of water. Air chilling extends the shelf-lift of the product since it extracts water from the carcass in the process, he said.