Chicken Livers - What's wrong?

It looks like the bird had fatty liver syndrome...see all the cracks in the liver? Actually, both livers look unhealthy if you look at the structure, or compare it to the liver of a home-raised dual purpose breed. Neither of which surprises me, these are meat birds, that are fed very high calorie diets and have little to no movement / excercise.
 
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nope..
as the birds go down the production line their entrails get sucked up a vacuum tube to be sorted out in another department.. the birds continue on down the conveyor to be processed however the order calls for them to be.. if they are whole birds then end up mixed together in the chillers where they are soaked and "washed".. so the chances of getting a bird that belonged to those particular livers in the same package is highly doubtful
 
Even the upper liver looks nasty. I’ll have to admit, I have only done 5 birds so far but my livers looked a lot better than that. I will jump to the conclusion that it may be a disease/feeding issue. Looks like a really fatty liver to the uneducated me.
 
Chicken from the store is in most cases raised in a dimly lit warehouse, and the Cornish X used are likely to go through all kinds of health issues, . . . It happens, but most of them don't make it to the store. Just like with eggs, they're sorted out.
 
Cloverleaf farm is right, that's fatty liver syndrome.
Common in modern broilers and diet related.
The liver turns pale, enlarged (if you look at the edges of the liver they're sort of rounded; a good liver has thin blade-like edges) and more friable (basically it falls apart).
The meat won't be bad to eat (at least no worse than other birds on the same diet).
But yuck, it's horrible to see.
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Isn't that part of why there were trying to prohibit forcefeeding geese in France in order to increase the liver size unnaturally? That is what this reminded me of.
 
I just butchered chickens for the first time. Some one day and others the next. I probably shouldn't have done it, but I put the giblets from the first day in water in the fridge and they lost their color by the next day. So I do think being in water could account for it.

I am new at processing chickens and sometimes I damaged the liver when I pulled it out of the chicken and it looked squishy. Does that mean I shouldn't eat it?

Also, a couple of times the bile duct ruptured. I rinsed everything off really well with the sprayer and froze the liver with the gizzards. Should I discard all the giblets at this point?//
 
Nope to both options. That is a diseased liver...either it has been affected/inflamed by the bird's diet or high metabolic rate...or both....but it is not from being in the water nor from a bile duct accident.

I just processed 20 meaties and only kept 2 of the livers, as the others showed such discoloration and a macerated texture~not nearly as bad as this one though. I've also seen this in some older birds. I've been processing birds for a long time and always examine livers closely before using them. The lower one in this picture should never have been offered for sale or consumption
I was just remembering the health class photos/movies when I saw the photo's of the livers reminded me of heavy drinkers vs non drinkers livers....
 
Well I would say I am at least 75% sure the one that looks bad has been in water for a period of time. I am an avid fisherman and when we used to fish for channel cat we used chicken liver among other things. Between maybe water and probably temperature I would say.
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I always put the livers in a bowl with ice/water when butchering and they look just like that in no time.
 

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