MBA Poultry, a Nebraska-based chicken processing company, plans to start operating its new Waverly NE plant May 23. MBA, which processes air-chilled chicken under the Smart Chicken brand, will have around 200 workers at the new facility, which joins another plant in Tecumseh NE.
According to company president Mark Haskins, the Waverly plant is the first of its kind to employ vision grading, in which a picture of each bird is taken to help separate inferior fowl from quality birds via computerized sorting.
MBA's Tecumseh plant uses a more humane controlled-atmosphere stunning instead of electric stunning in processing poultry. With controlled-atmosphere stunning, birds are put to sleep in an enclosed chamber containing carbon dioxide and enriched oxygen before being killed.
