Food safety is the top priority for all food manufacturers, but protein processors may face more inherent risks than others, and they live with additional regulation because of it. However, food safety isn't their only concern.
Whether its beef, lamb, salmon or free-range hens, the raw materials involved are expensive and the margins are sometimes as thin as the blade on a good filet knife. Animal welfare is an ongoing issue, and like any other manufacturers, meat packers, poultry plants and seafood processors must raise the bar on meeting these concerns, while lowering their carbon footprint.
All that said, these plants have plenty of opportunities, too, as innovative techniques and new technologies have emerged in recent years. The desire to improve performance in all areas has led to a new paradigm, where plant managers are less likely to retrench and stick with SOPs simply because they are SOPs.
Kill facilities are more likely to be located off the farm, and further processing often is done in separate buildings, or with some segregation arrangements. Equipment manufacturers offer more hygienic design, sanitation suppliers offer new solutions and farm and animal health practices continue to be looked at in terms of how they will express themselves throughout processing and most importantly in the finished product.
Ongoing technological innovations allow protein processors more speed and efficiency and better control over tolerances, within the parameters of an industry where each unit of raw material is nearly as unique as a snow flake.
"Even though meat, poultry and seafood processors face many of the same challenges as others in the food industry, it seems they have endured some of the most scrutiny as it pertains to the ever increasing number and severity of regulations controlling the way they do business," says Craig Colgrove, eastern sales manager with NuTec Manufacturing Co., New Lenox, Ill.
"The specter of foodborne illness and the many regulations and compliance mandates that operators have to now operate under are growing every day."
Meat and poultry processors could soon benefit from new vaccines available for use on the farm.
The animal health industry is developing products designed to greatly reduce the production and shedding of bacteria such as E.coli O157:H7, and salmonella. At least one product -- Escherichia Coli Bacterial Extract Vaccine with SRP Technology -- is now commercially available from Pfizer Animal Health, Madison, N.J.
The vaccine is designed to deliver live animals with a lower population of bacteria in their digestive tract and in their fecal matter, so there is less of a chance of significant contamination during slaughter and processing.
"We have done a series of field trials that have demonstrated that we can reduce by up to 85 percent the bacterial counts that the animals are shedding," says Brad Morgan, who is leading ongoing development and marketing of the product. "This reduces the pool of bacteria that is in the healthy animals."
That gives processors a head start on the control efforts that begin as soon as the animal is taken from the feed lot to slaughterhouse. "It will allow the other efforts like hot water rinses or lactic acid barriers to be more effective," he says.
The SRP term describes the siderophore receptors and porins that transport iron, an essential nutrient, into the bacterial cell. The SRP vaccine technology activates the animal's immune system to produce antibodies that target those bacterial proteins. This blocks iron absorption by the bacteria, Morgan explains. Deprived of iron the bacteria die and are passed through the digestive system without threat of continued multiplication and food contamination.
Shedding is a protective mechanism in which a healthy animal regulates the population of bacteria in its body by passing live organisms through the digestive tract, which produces fecal material that can easily transfer bacteria to carcasses and cut meat during slaughter and processing.
Other pre-harvest initiatives that show some promise include the modifications in the types and treatment of bedding material for animals.
The vaccine was approved for use in 2010, and Pfizer later announced a global licensing agreement with the product's developer, Epitopix LLC, Willmar, Minn. Morgan says the company hopes that the meat processors will see a benefit in the use of the product and encourage their suppliers to use the vaccine.
Fighting bacteria
Looking at the history of U.S. food borne illnesses, several major incidents have involved beef, pork and poultry. Just last year, tainted Atlantic salmon caused sickness in hundreds of people in the Netherlands and the U.S. Other food segments including dairy (historically) and produce (more recently) also have dealt their share of tragedy, but meat plants might face the most challenges when it comes to finding ways to eliminate or control pathogens such as E. coli, salmonella bacteria and Listeria monocytogenes.
Sanitation is just one part of the food safety picture, and many plants enlist the services of an outside sanitation services company. Even within the realm of sanitation services, protein plants have a handful of options, says Charles Giambrone, technology and regulatory manager for the safety division of Rochester Midland Co., Rochester, N.Y.
"There's not just one approach to control the pathogens in your product," Giambrone says. "There are really three different avenues." These involve sanitation, intervention chemistry and ingredient solutions, he explains. He describes them as options A, B, and C.
"A is the ingredient approach, using something like nisin to control pathogens, often in combination with one of the other approaches," Giambrone says. "There are not a lot companies using this because they do not like the idea of using additives if they are trying to keep a clean label."
Solution B has to do with improved surface and equipment sanitation, while C involves interventions -- chemicals used to clean the product. Most meat and poultry plants use some combination, along with segregation of work functions and other precautions that are part of their hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP) plans. Surface and equipment sanitation might be the most well-established piece, but more than ever it the overall program includes verification.
"Intervention has been in vogue since the 1990s," Giambrone says. "Various acids and acidified chloride and chlorine oxide as well as acetyl bromide [are in use]. Paracetic acid is very big with poultry."
Steam pasteurization of the carcass surface also is used sometimes on beef carcasses to rid the surface of E. coli.
"Plants have changed tremendously, too, and plant design and floor plans are now key parts of food safety," Giambrone adds. "The old segregation pattern and traffic flow was haphazard and problematic. A flow-through pattern with separate ingress and egress has become standard."
Different colored smocks and boots are used for the raw and cooked sides, sometimes there are even segregated break rooms. Zone segregation is another approach that makes it easier for personnel to develop clear and consistent procedures for segregating equipment and dealing with contact contaminations.
In the end, a multi-pronged approach is needed. "You hit (pathogens) in as many different places as you can to try to overcome them," he says.
Among those innovations that might be around the corner are things like bacteriophages (or phages) virus technologies including a product called EcoShield from Intralytix Inc., Baltimore. Phages are viruses that attack specific bacteria. In the case of EcoShield, that would be E. coli 0157:H7, one of the most common and most devastating bacteria the meat industry has had to battle. The company received USDA clearance in 2011 for the use of the phage, and it says that it can reduce E. coli O157:H7 in ground meat by more than 95 percent.
Making margins
Filling the customer's meat cases with safe, healthful products may be job one, but not far behind is the need to be competitive on quality, flavor and price. For the quality and flavor, there is an ancient craft of butchery that offers principles that can still be translated into a modern automated processing environment. The key, of course is in balancing those sometimes conflicting priorities.
"Meat, poultry and seafood processors work with very tight margins, so any cost savings can make a large impact on their profitability," says Dave Howard, regional sales manager for Robert Reiser Co., Canton, Mass. "Many of the machines supplied by Reiser have been developed to help processors save money in some fashion – in labor savings, processing advancements or [because] versatile machines can replace two or three or more other machines."
As an example, Reiser offers its Vemag stuffer that allows sausage processors to make a higher-quality finished sausage with a high density. The result is reduced casing costs per sausage and a significant savings over the course of a year. Vacuum-processed sausage reduces cooking and drying times, Howard adds.
Colgrove says NuTec is always challenged to find new applications for new technologies and to help processors work more efficiently.
"We are looking more and more into development of more ancillary equipment in order to offer our customers more of an integrated systems approach to portion control and portion depositing," he says.
Any discussion of efficiencies with meat processors might bring to mind frustrations over last year's image debacle regarding lean finely textured beef.
"The LFTB controversy demonstrates that consumers' perceptions and understanding of modern food production can quickly affect markets and/or a company's business." That understatement is at the outset of "Lean Finely Textured Beef: The ‘Pink Slime' Controversy," a policy report prepared for Congress by policy analyst Joel Greene.
Giambrone points out that by allowing for additional processing of material, LFTB offered both economy and some sustainability benefit in that a higher percentage of each animal was being put to food use.
Sustainable operations
Water use in meat and poultry process has increased steadily over the years as food safety and sanitation practices have become more aggressive. But green initiatives have led meat plant operators to look for ways to do more with less water. That often means treating, reusing and converting water from one use to another. Treated process water can in some cases find a secondary use in clean-in-place and other sanitation systems or in "gray water" uses.
Like all manufacturing operations, meat plants are becoming more careful about energy use for everything from lighting to the heating of process equipment, says Giambrone.
Consumer concerns about animal welfare are often most visible when bad practices are exposed, but it might be more remarkable to many consumers to learn that Cargill Inc. now uses third-party remote video monitoring to reinforce humane practices in its slaughterhouses. Just last year the American Meat Institute produced a positive video about U.S. beef production narrated by animal behaviorist Temple Grandin, who has long been associated with guarding animal welfare.
While tighter controls and increased scrutiny serve purposes, NuTec's Colgrove wonders if some efforts have gone too far or have somehow missed the mark.
"I now [see] in plants and maintenance shops more sanitation efforts taking place on the tools and components used to service the processing equipment than there used to be to govern actual production of product," he says. "It seems to me we are trying to create an almost purely sterile world or environment in which to operate, all the while discovering new issues to be concerned with. It makes you wonder where it will all end, and just how many processors are going to be able to keep pace with the seemingly never ending [list] of compliance mandates."
In at least one instance, however, the rest of the food processing industry is just catching up to safety processes long in place in the meat industry. Just last month, FDA released for comment the two latest rules of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), extending HACCP plan requirements to nearly all food processors. Meat plants have been perfecting HACCP for nearly two decades.
This article originally appeared in the February 2013 issue of Food Processing Magazine.
