USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has published a final rule amending the definition of the roaster chicken class. FSIS has removed the minimum age requirement and increased the minimum carcass weight of roaster chickens from 5 pounds to 5.5 pounds. The final rule updates the definition of a roaster chicken to better reflect the characteristics of roaster chickens in the marketplace today.
NCC petitioned the agency in November of 2013 for the changes, and filed comments in support of the proposed rule in October of 2015.
“We believe that the changes to the definition of a ‘roasting chicken’ to remove the 8-week minimum age and to increase the minimum carcass weight to 5.5 pounds or more will benefit a wide variety of stakeholders,” NCC noted in its petition. “The rule brings beneficial and necessary consistency to the marketplace, allows producers and companies to raise chickens healthfully and efficiently, and ensures consumers are provided with a cost-affordable “roasting chicken” from their choice of producers.”
Improvements in breeding and poultry management techniques that have continued since FSIS established the current “roaster” poultry class standard have enabled producers to raise chickens with the characteristics of roasters in under 8 weeks. The physical attributes of roaster chickens remain the same.
A “roaster” chicken is now defined as a “young chicken (less that 12 weeks of age), of either sex, with a ready-to-cook carcass weight of 5.5 pounds or more, that is tender-meated with soft, pliable, smooth-textured skin and breastbone cartilage that is somewhat less flexible than that of a broiler or fryer.”
The final rule is available here.
