In the 1990s, a meat-plant employee entering a work station might have to use a decontaminating foot wash. Now, plant employees have to navigate a boot-scrubbing system, put on personal protective equipment (PPE) such as gloves, masks and goggles, and their movement is restricted to prevent any contamination.
The meat and poultry industry is committed to ensuring a safe food product for our customers, maintaining the highest animal-welfare standards for our livestock, providing a safe and rewarding work environment to our employees, reaching out to the communities in which we do business, and working to minimize our environmental impact.
Hormel’s brand new Progressive Processing plant in Dubuque, Iowa, opened earlier this year and recently became one of the first new-construction manufacturing facilities to earn gold-level LEED certification. Given that
Protein plant of the future? You may be thinking, “I can’t worry about a future plant when I am focusing on my current plant’s operations.” But without forward thinking NOW, your protein plant of the future may be a boarded-up building surrounded by a weed-infested parking lot, or an over-built mega-structure burdened with fixed overhead costs and no workforce.
A recent report by the New York Times pointed out the decline in the number of slaughterhouses in the country - there were 908 slaughterhouses in 2008, down from 1,211 in 1992 - and the affect it has had on the farming community.