Commercial Chicken production in Australia typically combat germs with chemicals, at Cartapo Creek we tackle the same issue from another angle.
The Chicken Industry in Australia is dominated by large scale mass production farms, with large scale farms comes large scale germs. The industry standard to combat germs is not to reduce flock numbers and increase cleanliness, but to treat chickens with chlorine during the processing stage to wipe out all the bacteria on the surface of the meat leaving a hygenic safe meat product for commercial sale. The downside to this process is – the chlorine also eliminates the good bacteria on the chickens and as a result reduces the shelf life of chicken as a fresh meat product. Typically commercial chicken is able to be on the shelf “fresh” for 2 to 3 days before it considered unfit for sale.
At Cartapo Creek we tackle the same problems from a different angle. Our chicken flocks are smaller and they are given a larger living area which prevents unhygenic living conditions. We also relocate our flocks in mobile tractors allowing them to have fresh forraging areas regularly and preventing them living in unhygenic conditions. When it comes to processing, our birds are washed and prepared in chlorine free water which allows the surface of the chicken meat to age naturally and improves the shelf life of the final product by double. Since we do not use chlorine when processing our chickens, it allows the meat to stay fresh for up to 7 days!