WELCOME to the regular series of articles focusing on red meat R&D, presented by Beef Central and the Australian Meat Processor Corporation. These items highlight a range of projects designed to enhance the efficiency, productivity, product quality and safety of Australian red meat sold into the domestic market and around the world.
All have the ability to help underpin Australia’s unrivalled reputation as the world’s premier export of quality beef, lamb and offal. Links to previous articles in the series appear below.
THE Australian Meat Processor Corporation has worked together with New South Wales beef processor EC Throsby to develop a fast-chilling process for the company’s hot boning operation near Young.
The new process reduces the time taken to chill beef after it has been boned and packaged by more than 50 percent.
The EC Throsby processing facility delivers bulk chilled beef to domestic and export markets from a hot boning process.
More conventionally, beef carcases are chilled overnight, before being boned the next day. Under hot-boning, boning takes place using hot carcases, straight off the kill floor, before the packaged meat is chilled. The process is normally applied to lower quality beef, such as bulls and cows.
The research project focused on trialling an in-line cooling system that can chill hot beef, after boning, in record time which exceeds food safety standards and delivers a high-quality chilled beef product with an extended shelf life.
The process has been in the making for nearly two years through AMPC Co-Innovation manager Dave Dwyer and employees from EC Throsby, starting with research.
The team looked at other beef-producing countries which use a similar process. They then found a refrigeration provider to loan their in-line cooling system, to allow the trials to commence.
Following successful trials, EC Throsby partnered with BOC, and installed a state of the art in-line cooling system. The process went through stringent validation before being put to use.
EC Throsby chief executive officer Mick Dorahy said the system of accelerating the chilling process of hot-boned beef products had allowed the company to become more efficient in delivering higher quality beef to manufacturing customers, as well as allowing Throsby to diversify its customer base.
AMPC co-innovation manager Dave Dwyer said EC Throsby was at the forefront of hot boning in Australia.
The Throsby family has been processing livestock in the NSW Hunter Valley for more than 70 years, with the current state-of-the-art processing facility near Whittingham, about 10km from Singleton.
The plant slaughters and hot-bones mostly cows and bulls, sold as bone-in and boneless beef, both manufacturing and primal cuts, offals and fancy meats for the export and domestic markets. Around 95pc of turnoff is exported, into countries like the US, Indonesia, China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan Canada, Mexico and the Middle East.
Previous articles in this series:
- What’s in the box? Technology driving label verification
- Red meat R&D: AMPC Academy of Meat Engineers designs own sausages
- ‘Spot the dog’ shows benefits of automated guided vehicle technology + VIDEO
- 3D printing trial begins at red meat processing plants
- Technology trial for small stock electronic ID
- Progress in shadow robotics
- Eating quality tool a step closer to commercial reality
- Advancing red meat sustainability
- 5G trial for Aussie red meat processing plants
- New product academy to see processors get the most out of each carcase
- Shadow robot technology mimics human actions
- Frenched lamb – no knives, no water
- Could a futuristic exo-skeleton create new opportunity in the meat sector?
- Red Meat R&D: Upping our game in processing efficiency
- Magnetic conveying could leverage high-speed train technology for beef
Congratulations on the innovation – Wish EC Throsby good luck in getting reliable supplies of CO2 to drive the chilling process.
Hot boning and fast chilling may be efficient in some ways, BUT I hope someone has checked on it’s effect on TENDERNESS??