Chicken abuse at Foodtech Packtech

For the past three days, everyone who is anyone in the NZ food industry was at the Auckland Showgrounds attending Foodtech Packtech.

Being an anyone who is someone, What’s New in Food Technology & Manufacturing was at the event. For us it is a rare opportunity to meet our current readers, find new readers and to network with our advertisers.

Roast chicken.

At every Foodtech Packtech we hand out hundreds of magazines and also farm animal-shaped stress balls. We’ve done cows and sheep and this year it was chickens. These harmless novelties are always extremely popular and turn up in exhibits all over the show and bring a smile to even the most foot-sore visitor.

However, this year, to our horror, an incident of extreme chicken abuse occurred at the event. An innocent chicken [stress relief ball] was misappropriated by a ruthless exhibitor, forced into a plastic bag and vacuum packed.

Vacuum-packed chicken.

Tim Morton from D&L Packaging was reputed to say, “We just put the chicken in, suck out the air and seal it. To show how efficient we are at vacuum packing we then cut open the bag, release the chook and then do it all again.”

Another row of chickens was seen disappearing into a Unitherm roasting tunnel on the Reactive Engineering stand, another was standing firm on a Gripsheet.

Nerida Kelton from the Australian Institute of Packaging was heard to express worry that such chicken abuse would cross the Tasman and infiltrate AUSPACK next year.

Sticky chicken.