It is quite often the case that when a visitor attends a food technology show, he or she feels a bit overwhelmed by the variety of machines on display. In part, this is due to the fact that the food we eat comes in so many different forms, from sticky liquids to frozen solids. How do you really know whether a particular piece of equipment can be applied to the red meat industry?
This is one of the main advantages of visiting the International Poultry Exposition: poultry meat is similar enough to red meat that most of the further processing machines on display can be used within the red meat industry, in some cases in rather innovative ways.
One important aspect in food production is separating products into clearly defined weights or specific numbers of pieces. When doing so, it is critical that any deviation from these specifications is as small as possible in order to reduce giveaway.
Closely linked to these machines is packaging equipment, since often the batches go directly into the packaging line or the packages themselves need to be weighed both for quality control purposes and for printing a final label on the finished product, for example. It is therefore very desirable that the machines are well integrated so that the process runs as smoothly as possible.
Often enough, all one needs is a simple, sturdy and accurate scale.
Like bacon'n'eggs, batching and grading frequently come together in the same machine, which is mainly due to the fact that they are similar processes, in the sense that you group together or batch products of a similar quality or grade. The new grader series is suitable for grading and batching both meat and poultry and has a more cleaning friendly design. We also improved the man-machine interface and provided it with more processing power to make the batching more exact. This then allows production managers to have an improved overview in order to optimize yield and minimize giveaway.
Special companies also introduced an improved design on their weighing system. Instead of using a conventional tube design for the frame, the company engineers opted for an open-frame design, which translates into less area where product pieces can lodge themselves and foster bacterial growth. Company also installed its own controller, designed to withstand the rigours of the working floor of a food processor. The company introduced another innovation in this area of technology, a new 9-inch (22.8cm) portion classifier designed to handle items like portioned steaks, pork chops and other small food portions weighing less than 21bs (900g) and shorter than 10 inches (25cm) in length. It is extremely fast and accurate with programmable controls that allow it to batch by count, weight or multiple product type, thus minimizing the incidence of overweight packing. Another company also introduced a batching system that they like to call the Speed Batcher. This breakthrough new system uses a patented method to intelligently speed-batch product. The system first divides the incoming flow of raw material into smaller portions. It then remixes them to create the desired package weight. This high precision method is both faster and more accurate than its predecessors.
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Although meat products are often sold based on their weight, some customers require a specific number of pieces per package. This task is frequently performed by hand, which increases labour costs as well as leading to miscounted batches with either too many or too few pieces.
TEXT 8. Packaging
Long before there was packaging, there was meat: fresh, dripping off the carcass, warm and filling. But meat did not remain fresh for long, so man developed various ways to deal with this problem: cooking, to facilitate consumption and perhaps a bit of spoilage obviation; drying, a process continued to this day in the form of jerky; salting, in some instances called curing and processing for sausages, hams and pastrami; and domestication.
Man also discovered the fact that icy temperatures can reduce the rate of all manner of spoilage and quality loss. When trains came into being, Carrier invented mechanical refrigeration to complement the new railroad cars. Carcasses, hanging on rails and shoulders, occasionally shrouded in cloth, became the unit of commerce moving from killing floor to retail butcher.
Butchers, a trade that thrived in the late 19th and most of the 20th century, owned and operated a tiny store with a closed backroom walk-in refrigerator. When the negotiations were complete, a housewife exited the establishment with her purchase wrapped in a sort of semi- moisture resistant white paper, appropriately called butcher wrap, bound together with string, the first real meat package.
The impact of the automobile on retailing resulted in the emergence of a supermarket shopping economy that replaced corner groceries and meat markets. This is when the idea of pre-pack- aged meat emerged. Led by DuPont during the 1940s and 1950s in its drive to increase sales of its cellophane polymer, the company pioneered a total systems approach. DuPont marketed its concept of building supermarket refrigerated backrooms, saws, knives, scales and simple wrapping machines capable of handling cellophane and nested paperboard trays, introducing open refrigerated display cases, hiring butchers and offering pre-packaged (and visible) meat without much conversation with a backroom butcher. Not quite instantaneously, but very rapidly, supermarkets and their pre-packaged beef captured nearly three quarters of all grocery and fresh meat sales in North America.
DuPont's basic concept has persisted to this day: with subtle changes such as moulded pulp often replacing paper- board and the later intrusion of expanded polystyrene (EPS) trays with their superior ability to retain purge. Somewhere in the midst of the tray debate absorbent pads manufactured from pulp were introduced into tray bases in an attempt to control meat purge, another of the early packaging notions that has not been markedly improved upon.
During the 1960s and early 1970s, the shortcomings of cellophane (moisture sensitivity, tear resistance and even oxygen permeability under varying environmental conditions) were emphasised by intruders from the merging thermoplastics industry. Plasticized polyvinyl chloride (PVC) film was demonstrated to have high oxygen permeability, an ability that allowed packaged red meat to retain the desired red oxymyoglobin colour that had become the standard of "quality". PVC film retained its properties and was glossy, transparent and machinable and was less expensive than cellophane.
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Theoretical studies indicated that the costs of central packaging could be below those of back room operations. And so, hesitatingly, some bold retailers tested the concept in many different places around the world. Challenges such as shelflife and colour, loomed large, as they do today.
To elevate the oxygen concentration in the package environment would allow the best retention of the highly desired oxymyoglobin red colour. Simultaneously elevating the carbon dioxide would retard microbiological deterioration. Someone, whose identity is evidently lost in history, determined that if the meat were cut into retail portions under relatively sanitary conditions in reduced temperature environments and packaged in gas barrier structures resembling back room trays together with an over-wrap.
The idea of purchasing pre-packaged beef, pork, lamb and mutton in non-leaking sealed trays that was so attractive that M&S captured market share almost overnight and not only from the corner butcher but also from "traditional" supermarket chains.
In mid 1990s it was adopted the centralized packaging (which by this time was called case-ready packaging) so outlets did a major food chain anywhere completely convert. Meat packers around the UK then went on to install clean and cold equipment for processing, which to no one's surprise, even started supplying continental retail outlets from the island.
In the US, during the 1980s through today, numerous packaging equipment and materials suppliers and inventors offered more than 60 different case- ready technologies to meat packers, retailers, intermediaries, etc. The obvious application of high oxygen/high carbon dioxide in gas barrier trays often failed because the adopters failed to grasp the indispensability of sanitation and temperature control in the system. The issue of colour retention, regardless of technical merit, was often not addressed as some vacuum and reduced oxygen schemes were offered and tested among sceptical consumers. Perhaps the most prominent was the reduced oxygen barrier plastic package offered through hundreds of Kroger supermarkets using Cryovac structures made on Multivac equipment and supported by a vigorous communications program to persuade consumers that purple meat colour was good. Perhaps this late 1980s program might have succeeded had the transparent packaging not also visibly shown purge and occasionally leaked.
By the mid-1990s, economic, marketing, technological and safety issues were driving the meat chain towards case- ready fresh red meat. A reflective review of the initiatives, however, suggested that most of the drive had supplier rather than retailer or consumer demand origins. Since the early 1980s, case-ready retail packaging technologies had been applied to poultry products. These now entered the beef and pork segments of red meat retailing.
TEXT 9. Freezing
There are several different freezing methods available to meat processors. Recent advances in the design of fast freezers are proving to be very advantageous for companies involved in the production of frozen meat products that come in small sizes, such as bacon bits or ground meat.
Individual quick freezing, shortened to IQF, is a process usually applied to "naked" products such as dices, strips of meat, sausages, ham and also ground meat, which can be in raw, cooked or fried form.
Using the individual quick freezing process, the separation of the different pieces of dices, strips or ground meat is maintained during the freezing process, without the formation of blocks or lumps. When the products are used in further processing, they are more convenient to handle for both the consumer as well as for the industry.
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Convenience and quality. One negative aspect of slow freezing is the fact that it creates large ice crystals in frozen products. If the freezing time is long (meaning hours), the ice crystals can be so big that they destroy the cells that make up the products. This can be noted as extensive liquid drip loss when the product is thawed.
Quick freezing eliminates these disadvantages. Both the frozen and thawed products retain their natural textures and colours and the water loss is negligible when thawed.
Extremely quick freezing of meat products can be achieved in industrial production through, for example, cryogenic freezers, IQF freezers or impingement freezers. When used for hamburgers, the freezing time is lowered to a few minutes and dehydration losses during the freezing process are negligible. Dehydration losses are otherwise significant if the product is frozen in an overnight cold storage.
The market for quickly frozen products. The market for food products frozen using the individual quick freezing technique is steadily increasing. Among the driving forces behind this trend are convenience, quality, and economy. Furthermore, demographic changes, such as the increasing number of one-person households, are also feeding demand, since products in which individual quick freezing has been applied are used to create dinners with individually frozen ingredients.
The catering and the ready-meal industry use a lot of IQF products as ingredients and thus are big consumers. Sticky products have to be frozen so that they can pass through portioning machines and all products benefit from being frozen when portioned.
Slow freezing creates such large ice crystals in frozen products that they destroy the cells that make up the products. This can be noted as extensive liquid drip loss when the product is thawed. Quick freezing eliminates these disadvantages. Both the frozen and thawed products retain their natural textures and colours and the water loss is negligible when thawed.
The fluidised bed freezer. The year 2000 saw the launch of a new concept in individual quick freezing based on a patent for the transportation of products in a semi-fluidised bed, which allowed the design of a compact freezer that fulfilled the production needs of the meat industry. To date, this new freezer has provided an excellent hygienic design, high performance figures and low operational costs. These characteristics represent clear improvements compared to traditional IQF freezers.
The company IQF Frost decided to test a prototype of the quick freezer in their line. The installation was easy and the prototype had surprisingly few 'children's diseases'. Among the features of the fluidised bed freezer is the possibility to freeze cooked or fried products straight from the oven or fryer down to -20C in a couple of minutes. And because it uses the individual quick freezing process, the degree of separation of the products is excellent and the appearance and texture of the thawed product is natural.
