Abstract

A cross-sectional study was conducted from December 2019 to March 2020 to detect the major causes of carcass condemnation and to estimate the attributed financial loss in chickens slaughtered at a private poultry slaughterhouse in Bishoftu, Ethiopia. The study involves a postmortem (PM) inspection of 400 randomly selected chickens. From a total of 400 chickens subjected to PM examination, 77 (19.25%) of them had abnormalities. Of these, 35(8.75%) chickens were totally condemned, while 42 (10.5%) were partially rejected. The major causes of total carcass condemnation observed during this study were machine damage (4.25%), poor bleeding (2.5%), emaciation (1.25%), and septicemia (0.5%). While bruise (7.25), fracture of bone (2%), arthritis (1%) and machine damage (0.25%) were the major causes of partial condemnation, respectively. The high bruises occurrence in the slaughterhouse was due to poor handling of the poultry during transportation and hoisting. The annual financial loss incurred due to carcass condemnation to the slaughterhouse in the study period was estimated to be ETB 660,480 or USD 19,144.34. Improving the management of harvesting, transportation, and adjustment of the equipment used at slaughter can reduce the effect on the carcass and financial losses. This type of study especially, on poultry was not reported so far in Ethiopia therefore; this finding can be used as baseline information for further investigation and controlling of factors responsible for chicken meat condemnation in a poultry slaughterhouse.

Key words: Carcass, condemnation, financial, losses, poultry, slaughterhouse.