Meat + Poultry - October 2004 - 74

Over herd
Calling Canadian
beef unsafe is like

pumps included seal failures, shafts breaking or wobbling, bearing failures and clean-inplace compatibility. The company addressed the issues by developing 100 percent stainless steel pumps that are designed to be more durable - and much more expensive - than
any other product on the market.

calling your twin
sister ugly.
- Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute, on his disapproval
of the U.S. ban on Canadian cattle and
beef products.

On the road again
It seems news stories of livestock running
loose on highways across America have become as common as mile markers lately. Usually the result of some type of collision or a tractor trailer rolling over en route to a feedyard or
slaughter plant, images of corralling cops chasing down runaway pigs, cows or chickens seem
to be magnets for media coverage. In an Associated Press story published in an Arkansas newspaper this past month, police were
called to help round up four cows that had escaped a cattle truck while it was cruising down
the highway. "The driver said he looked in his
rear-view mirror and saw one of his cows sliding across the interstate," said one cop. Three
more escaped as he slowed to stop. Traffic was
backed up for hours as three of the cows were
tranquilized and transported. The fourth eluded
authorities.
As hard as the industry works to convey its
commitment to animal welfare, we can't help
but think that the people who witness such mishaps have anything but a good impression of
meat companies. We'd like to see some type
of protocol established to help livestock haulers
prepare for these types of mishaps rather than
leave the situation in the hands of wannabe
ranchers with badges, guns and no horses.

Designs on food safety
One day before A.M.I.'s Annual Convention began, the organization held a Sanitary Facility Design Workshop, to detail the 11 principles of sanitary plant design developed by the
Facility Design Task Force.
Under the heading of creating "distinct hygienic zones," between raw and cooked product, one presenter pointed out that the secret to succeeding here is to "control people and
materials." He said if you allow even the smallest opportunity for people to circumvent the
system, they will. He recalled one plant he went into and witnessed a worker nearly doing
the splits to avoid stepping in a foot bath. Many workers could increase their value many
fold if they would try as hard doing their job as they do in finding ways to get around it.
Other common sense pointers recommended to processors who were either building a
new plant or renovating an old one, included:
* If local building codes mandate a certain type of shrubs or trees around your facility,
put them far enough away from your building to make in inconvenient for rodents and
birds to make themselves at home;
* Color code all aspects of raw and cooked sides of the plant to make it clear which is
which. Operators might try red for the raw side, and blue or yellow for the cooked side.
Don't stop at just using colored helmets, either. Engineers recommend color coding
locker rooms, restrooms, doors, cafeteria seats, smocks, maintenance tools, walls
and even floors when possible.

Primeribbing

Brought to you by
MEAT&POULTRY Magazine.

Cartoon by Bob Bliss

Forecasting trouble
According to engineers at B.P.I., Dakota
Dunes, S.D., the reason the company began
building (and now selling) their own brand of
meat processing pumps was because of frequent breakdowns among the equipment at
their plants. According to one engineering official, Erlan Rice, common problems among
64

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Meat + Poultry - October 2004

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