Anyone in Louisiana ever process for state agent?

[acipolone]

We haven't processed a whole lot of birds for human consumption, but we operate under the 20,000 Producer/Grower exemption. In Louisiana, you need to register with the state and they come out quarterly to review and we need to send in logs of our sales quarterly, as well.

The fellow who was our agent -- who saw us through the remodeling of our "processing shed" -- never got to come out while we were processing. He retired not long ago. The new lady doesn't seem to want to answer of all my questions, and I'm nervous as heck.

I have her coming on the 20th when I'm going to be processing some turkeys. Since my plucker isn't working (and couldn't handle a turkey, anyway), I'll be dry plucking by hand, which is making me even more nervous. No scalding or anything, just killing, plucking, then gutting and packaging. All she says is, "I need to make sure you're not making an adulterated product."

Anyone here process in Louisiana? We keep our place clean and, when we have to hand pluck, work pretty quick. I can usually knock out a turkey in about an hour, from start to finish. I'm mostly worried she's going to have some issue with how long it'll take to hand pluck. Does anyone have experience with hand plucking for state inspectors, even if it's not Louisiana? Any ideas what things I should be careful to do?

I'm probably making a bigger deal out of this than I should be, but I won't know what to do if she sees me dry plucking and says, "What the heck is that? Shut it down! No poultry for you!"

 

[kuntrygirl]

Good Luck. Keep us posted.

 

[acipolone]

A late update, but an update nonetheless!

The inspection was kind of a joke. She showed up before we had even started, looked at the facility, asked a question ("Is this where you kill them?") and then said it was good and left. That was it. I got the impression that she didn't really want to witness the process ... which is kind of funny for someone whose job it is to make sure the processing is sanitary!

Regardless, we kicked Thanksgiving's butt. Instead of dry plucking we actually figured out the secrets of scalding and it made plucking a breeze, although I stand by the effectiveness of pithing as helping even more. Rather than the hour it took us to dry pluck we had them in a chill tank in about 20 minutes.

And we found out the hard way that our plucker can't handle a turkey, but at least it works great for chickens!