The processing of poultry such as chickens and turkeys has become highly automated. Birds generally are conveyed suspended by their legs from shackles of an overhead conveying systems along processing lines for evisceration, cut-up, and further processing. It is highly desirable to perform as many of the processing operations on the birds as possible while the birds are suspended from their shackles to minimize handling and ensure greater uniformity in the cutup and processing of the birds. Accordingly, the birds are conveyed into engagement with various processing devices while they move in series suspended from their shackles along a processing path. For example, the birds can be de-feathered, decapitated, opened, eviscerated, and cut apart while being advanced progressively through a poultry processing plant suspended from shackles of an overhead conveyor line. As a result, the labor required for processing poultry carcasses is significantly reduced while uniformity and adjustability in the sectioning of the poultry carcasses into various poultry parts is more predictable.
Chicken wings, commonly referred to as “buffalo wings” have become a popular takeout item for home consumption and as menu items in restaurants and fast food outlets. A demand has emerged for larger and meatier wings. This extra meat generally is taken from the breast and/or back portions of the birds from which their wings project. To ensure efficiency and proper cooking of the wings, it is important to retailers, restaurants, and others that all the wings to be cooked are of substantially the same weight. Larger wings do not cook as fast as smaller wings, and thus there is a possibility that the larger wings of a batch with smaller wings will be undercooked or that the smaller wings in a batch with larger wings will be overcooked. The result is poor quality product that may have to be discarded. Accordingly, it is important that precise, substantially similar amounts of breast and back meat be removed with the wings from the poultry carcass to ensure that each wing and its attached breast meat will be of a substantially equal size and weight. Furthermore, it may be more desirable to include as much breast meat as possible and in substantially the same amounts from wing to wing since breast meat generally is considered to be of higher quality than back meat. Wings with a piece of breast meat attached, depending upon their cut, may be referred to in the industry as “fast food style,” or “silver dollar,” or “new style” wings.
To ensure uniformity in the weight of chicken wings cut from birds in an automated processing plant, wing cutter machines have been developed. One example of a wing cutter is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,429,549 of Verrijp et al., and the contents of that patent are hereby incorporated by reference. In the wing cutter machine disclosed in the '549 patent, poultry carcasses suspended upside down from shackles are turned so that they encounter the wing cutter back-first; i.e. the backs face in the direction in which the carcasses are conveyed. As each carcass is, pulled by its shackles through the wing cutter, the wing on one side of the carcass is engaged by a first wing guide assembly, which tends to spread the wing away from the body of the carcass. This spreading of the wings dislocates and separates the joint between the wing and shoulder of the bird and pulls or stretches a quantity of meat from the back and/or breast of the bird. The bird is thereafter engaged at the separated shoulder joint by a first circular rotating blade, which cuts the wing and portions of back and/or breast meat from the body of the carcass. Subsequently, the wing on the opposite side of the bird is engaged by a second wing guide, which spreads this wing and dislocates or separates the shoulder in the same manner. The shoulder region is then engaged by a second circular rotating blade, downstream of the first, which cuts the wing and part of the pulled-away back and breast meat from the opposite side of the bird. Thus, wings with a piece of back meat and/or breast meat attached are cut from the moving birds to produce meatier chicken wings.
Other wing cutting devices are disclosed in, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,651,383 of van der Eerden and 5,569,069 of Horst et al., and the disclosures of these patents also are hereby incorporated by reference.
One shortcoming of prior wing cutters arises from the fact that birds encounter the wing cutter back-first or with their backs facing the direction of movements of the birds along the processing path. This can result in a more complex and, as in the '549 patent, a mechanized assembly for pulling the wings away from their carcasses. Furthermore, the amount of breast meat that is cut off with each wing can vary significantly since the rotating knives initially engage the shoulder joint region from the back of the bird rather from the front or breast side of the bird. As a result, it is more difficult and generally not possible with such wing cutters to ensure a consistent high quality “new style” or “silver dollar” wing, with a precisely sized piece of breast meat attached, which is demanded by consumers and therefore more valuable. There is thus a need for a wing cutter for an automated poultry processing line that addresses the shortcomings of the prior art. More specifically, there is a need for a wing cutter that produces wings with a highly consistent and predictable amount of breast meat attached to each wing. A wing cutter that produces high quality “new style” and “silver dollar” and “fast food” style wings is needed. It is to such a wing cutter and to a method of removing wings from poultry carcasses that the present invention is primarily directed.