Expert System to Assist Root Causes Diagnostics in Poultry Bruises

Abstract

In the year of 2017, Brazil became the largest chicken meat exporting country contributing with 24.88% of all exported meat. With the evolution and prominence of Brazilian poultry in the world scenario, the biggest challenge for poultry industries is to maintain the quality of carcasses, since there is a high number of losses in the sector. A problem commonly encountered in this type of industry is the occurrence of bruising in broilers due to a variety of causes due to non-conformities in pre-slaughter processes. Skin changes are especially considered during visual slaughter analysis and may result in either partial condemnation (disposal of affected parts of the chicken carcass for human consumption) or total condemnation (complete carcass disposal). In this paper, an Expert System Prototype (ESP) was developed to assist inexperienced professionals in diagnosing bruises in chicken carcasses. The prototype assisted in detecting the causes that generate a bruise and in decision making within the production chain. As a system output, a report is generated to point out in which stage of the process the bruise occurred and what should be done to avoid similar problems.