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1 Mhairi visits the UK’s second largest poultry group

This was my third visit as a Quality Scout for McDonald's. This time Stanley and I were off to a processing plant in Grantham called Moy Park Padley which is part of the Moy Park Ltd Poultry group and one of the companies under the OSI umbrella. The company is the UK's second largest poultry group, and Europe's fifth largest poultry group. Within the group they slaughter over three million birds per week, although not on this site. At Moy Park Padley they only process chicken.

McDonald's along with other well known retailers in the UK and Europe have chicken products made here.

This was extra exciting for us though as we were to witness the new "Chicken Selects" product being made and we were to have the honour of tasting the new product before it goes on sale on the 14th February 2007.

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2 What’s really in the new Chicken Selects?

The chicken used for this particular product (play/pause) is delivered from suppliers who are all regularly inspected by McDonald's, the suppliers themselves and independent auditors.

Over the years Moy Park Padley has produced other chicken items for McDonald's menus, including the (play/pause) Chicken Premiere (my favourite!) and Chicken McNuggets (the kid's favourite!).

On arriving at the plant, we were met by all the important people. (play/pause) Ron Lawson, (play/pause) Louise Hickmott and (play/pause) Sarah Brocklehurst came to greet us, and we signed a declaration form to say that we hadn't been in contact with, nor had ourselves diarrhoea, or been in contact with the bird flu virus.

(play/pause) After a short presentation from Louise, in which she told us all about the company and their history, the products they supply McDonald's with and the latest investments to their production line to incorporate the new Chicken Select, Sarah told us more about the new product. (play/pause) Chicken Selects are made purely from breast meat and then a (play/pause) marinade and spices are the only other ingredients added to flavour it. We were taken to the factory to see first hand what goes on and in the Chicken Selects.

Standards at the supplier

I have to say here and now, this is the most unglamorous part of being a Quality Scout. As this is a food production plant we were supplied with protective clothing, which consists of a hair net, a hard hat, ear plugs (the plant is noisy in parts), protective overalls and wellies. Any jewellery has to be removed for obvious reasons - you don't want to find an earring in your food - and you are not allowed to wear perfume/aftershave to prevent tainting the food. Everyone who enters the plant wears this gear and once you've donned this fetching outfit you have to sanitise your wellies and wash your hands thoroughly.

We were taken through every stage of the process; from seeing the raw product, i.e. the chicken breast (and I can, hand on heart, say that is all there is to it - no gory bits, no skin, no bones not even dark meat, just breast), to the cutting of the chicken, the marinating, coating, cooking, freezing and finally the packing and dispatching.

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3 Can profits and high standards work together?

Three words stick in my head after this visit: vigilance, passion and traceability. (play/pause) The staff here are vigilant in the checks that have to be carried out on the line at every stage. We were amazed at the number of checks to be done, e.g. a constant oven temperature, and how often these checks have to be carried out - some are every 10 minutes. They cannot afford at any point to falter here. The line would completely halt. (play/pause) These people are passionate about what they do.

They also believe in the products they use. Don't get me wrong, I know they want profit too, but they really want it to be first class food they sell. When it came to asking questions later I said how frustrating (although (play/pause) I think my wording was a bit different!) it must be to see things written in the media and to listen to the stories that go round about McDonald's food. They all agreed it was.

Traceability is paramount to Ron, Louise and Sarah. Sarah can telephone Ron at the drop of a hat (and does) to say if there has been a complaint about a chicken product in the restaurant and, in a very limited amount of time, they can trace a chicken breast down to the hen house it came from.

When the produce comes in to the plant it is checked off from a list of approved suppliers. If it doesn't match, it doesn't get used. When it leaves the plant for the restaurant the box it is in carries not only a 'Best Before Date' but also letters stating which plant it came from, the day of the year and the exact time it came off line. We had written a list of questions the night before to ask Ron, Louise and Sarah, but to be honest seeing the Chicken Selects being made first hand had answered a lot of them.

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4 Is Stanley Geddes impressed by what he sees and hears?

The next thing was the tasting, so for lunch we were treated to a range of chicken dishes and the new Chicken Selects themselves - they are delicious!

During lunch we asked the questions that hadn't been answered and nobody backed away from giving us an answer. Questions such as (play/pause) "Where do your chickens come from?", (play/pause) "How much salt goes into your product?", (play/pause) "Are they free from hormones?", (play/pause) "How old are the birds when slaughtered?"

Lunch and the debate over, (play/pause) it was time for us to go home. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit, and it is really funny for me to hear Stanley speak about the visit to family and friends. He is fast becoming an advocate for McDonald's and the produce that he has seen them use so far.

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