Stuffing and grinding processes continue to improve operationally and in terms of product quality.

Employee ownership gives Superior Farms employees a vested interest in a safe workplace.

Meat products enhanced through an injection process can have better taste and shelf life.

Each year, regulations for wastewater treatment have become more stringent, challenging processors to develop new environmental initiatives and facilitate new technologies.

Conveyors are the arteries and veins of a plant which serpentine through rooms, transporting products between processing and packaging lines and into waiting trucks. The implementation of conveyors has dramatically improved the means in which product is transported. Totes, tubs, carts and lugers have been replaced by these simple yet critical pieces of equipment.

The recent outbreak in Europe of E. coli has, as one would expect, created fears and trepidation in a world of already weary consumers.

In recent months and years we all have seen the devastation a tsunami wave can have on an island. On June 16-18, I had the opportunity to attend the American Association of Meat Processors Annual Convention and Suppliers Exposition at the Peppermill Resort and Casino in Reno.

Packers and processors put safety and integrity of the product first. As such, that is the top priority of major slicing operations, and companies have many other key attributes to a well-sliced protein.

Since environmental exposure is a major source of Listeria monocytogenes contamination on fully cooked ready-to-eat products, cook-in-the-bag processing has become very important. By not exposing the product to the environment between cooking and packaging, the chance of Lm contamination is eliminated, which reduces the need for some of the antimicrobial agents and the post-packaging pasteurization process to eliminate Lm on ready-to-eat meat products.

Following a spring 2011 visit to AdvancePierre Foods’ Cincinnati processing plant, where the processor was pumping out a wide variety of formed protein products, The National Provisioner queried Tom Burroughs, director, Protein Research and Development for AdvancePierre, on some of the challenges and considerations through which processors need to work when developing and incorporating forming technology.