Mechanically Separated Chicken

If I were a chicken, I would probably not care to be mechanically separated. But I guess that goes without saying. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then you've probably never examined the label on one of those dubious canned meat products - you know the ones.

More often than not, one of the ingredients listed is mechanically separated chicken. While I'm certainly no fan of chickens, or any other fowl, this business of going around mechanically separating them sounds a bit harsh. But we'll assume that they do them in before applying such draconian methods.

According to the USDA, mechanically separated poultry is "a paste-like and batter-like poultry product produced by forcing bones with attached edible tissue through a sieve or similar device under high pressure to separate bone from the edible tissue." Which sounds like good eatin' to me.

If you can't get enough of this sort of thing, you might want to try the Wikipedia entry for mechanically separated meat, right here. Wikipedia's also got an entry for meat slurry. Yum, yum.

If you're dying for some visuals, head over to Reuven Meat Products' Web site and get a gander at some of their MSM photos - though it's not nearly as interesting as it sounds.

For more on canned meat, here are a few resources. There's the Potted Meat Food Products (some would call that an oxymoron) Web page, which provides a little more information. There's also a Potted Meat Food Product Tribute Page, if you can imagine such a thing. Last, but not least, is Mike's Meat Collection, which includes the truly appalling Armour Pork Brains in Milk Gravy.