Is it permissible to soak slaughtered chicken in hot water to ease plucking?

Question

In the chicken slaughter houses all over my country, you have the option to soak slaughtered chicken in hot water to ease plucking, or have them skinned without soaking and plucking. The butcher will ask for your option ((scalding or soaking plus plucking) or (direct skinning)).

As I have seen in some books, they claim that since the contents of intestine and stomach are still inside while soaking in hot water, the heat will initiate some metabolism process, and the chicken becomes haram in this manner.

Again, people having the other view claims that since soaking is for a brief period of time and the heat applied is only external, it does not reach the core and the meat is completely halal.

Sorry, I can not put any exact source for either of the views.

However, as is found in page 15 of this document, it does not mention anything about the meat becoming haram as a result of scalding. Though it warns about being careful during other processes. And this document comes from the Ministry of Agriculture of an Islamic country.

Could you please let me know whether it is permitted to soak chicken in hot water after it has been slaughtered in an Islamic manner?

Please mention authentic sources as much as possible.

Answer 1

According to the Hanafi school, even if the animal is slaughtered appropriately, many internal organs are still considered makruh tahrim due to the intrinsic filth of their contents (e.g. feces, urine). If these organs are not removed and the filth is allowed to permeate the meat itself, the contaminated meat would also become makruh tahrim; this is fundamentally similar to the ruling against mixing halal meat with haram meat, wherein if they are impossible to distinguish the entirety becomes prohibited.

While scalding (which is typically done before evisceration) exactly how long it would take for the filth to escape the organs and permeate the meat (assuming the organs themselves are neither punctured nor torn) depends on a number of factors, including but not limited to the temperature of the scalding water, the size of the animal and how long it's been since it was slaughtered.

From my brief (e.g. one minute on Google) research, scalding is not near hot enough, nor long enough, to substantially increase a whole chicken's core temperature, and definitely not enough to actually cook one. The chances of the organ walls breaking down and leeching filth into the meat due to the scalding process itself seems negligible to me, but mayhap someone on Cooking.SE could provide a better answer on that regard.

Answer 2

From a Kosher point of view, scalding causes the blood to clot and it stops exsanguination.

In other words, if you want make sure your chickens contain blood, scald them.

The machinery is not precise. Sometimes chickens are literally cooked alive while being electrocutioned.