Meat+Poultry - November 2018 - Bacon - 8

P R O C E S S OR PROF ILE

the company was never going to be interested
in being exclusive, so it made sense to buy an
already exclusive brand so they would have an
avenue to keep its business relationship going
with them.

Getting sugar out of
the bacon has been a
successful formulation
strategy for Pederson's.

SOURCING SENSE
One of the biggest lessons that Dudley has learned
since starting in the business concerns the importance of sourcing quality bellies, understanding
that the raw material quality is worth the premium.
"We make the most money off the raw materials

2018 BACON PROCESSING TRENDS + TECHNOLOGY MEAT+ POULTRY

we pay the most money for," he says. "It boils
down to relationships and understanding feed
rations. All that stuff the animals are going
through before they've come to our plant, we've
learned and know intimately."
Once the skinned and square-cut bellies
arrive, they are hung and smoked in one of the
company's three smokehouses, which can hold
approximately 8,000 lbs. of bellies at one time,
and are naturally cured.
"We never inject. We put all of our bellies into a
big vacuum tumbler and they get between two to
four hours to soak the solution up at their leisure,
rather than five seconds of time," Dudley says.
All three smokehouses are linked to Powis
PLS controllers which digitally monitor and
capture processing data throughout the production process, ensuring an ideal finished product.
As for seasoning, Dudley says that's an evolution that continues year after year.
"We have lived in uncured bacon land our
whole career and this company's whole life,
making a concerted effort to skip away from
nitrite and nitrate and not have a preservative
in our product," he says. "It has been a journey
of growth, steps back, jumps forward, with all
kinds of innovation throughout the years."
For instance, when Pederson's originally
took the nitrate out, it resulted in gray bacon,
and although the flavor was strong, people
just wouldn't buy bacon that wasn't pink. The
company experimented with beet powder
next, which produced purple bacon, and it sold
better. Then it worked with chemists in Florida
who developed a way to get pink bacon using
celery juice, and that became the standard in the
industry for about six years. Today, there's a new
mixture of spices that replaces nitrates that get
the pink look consumers and customers desire.
Dudley is adamant about conveying Pederson's
commitment to its basic foundations for its business, which never includes cutting corners in the
production process and a willingness to invest in
resources and technology to ensure the company's continued growth.
"We're a successful company and have been
here a long time, but we're still nobody in the
scheme of things," Dudley says. "We're one of
the only companies not owned by any big multinational but consider ourselves to be the best
little company for those people to watch and
know what the trends are going to be. We are
plugged into the consumers and that's been a
reason for our success."

Meat+Poultry - November 2018

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