Meat&Poultry - December 2011 - 68

GREATER OMAHA PACKING

air pressure is where carcasses enter the cooler. The cooler, which features a walking-beam system, tracks and holds up to 8,000 carcasses. Prior to fabrication, carcasses undergo a two-day chill. This is a major advantage for food safety, grading, production and processing, Davis says. Precise grading is accomplished using a vision-system camera. “The system is one of the fi rst implemented in the industry,” Fili says. “I’ve seen the results from that camera in direct conjunction with USDA graders over a five-year period and they’re almost dead on with one another. We’re one of the highest-grading plants in the US.” After exiting the cooler, carcasses enter the fab room and pass through a lactic acid cabinet. “We’re one of a few facilities with a lactic cabinet at the start of fab,” Fili says.

This thermal wash cabinet is just one intervention the company utilizes to ensure food safety. (Photo courtesy of GOP)

Carcasses are disassembled into various cuts and there’s a line for chucks, rounds, ribs and loins. Trim has its own belts. About 10 feet separates each line to maximize worker and food safety.

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“We also built the facility so we can trace animals to satisfy a European production system; you must be able to trace animals back to the farm and we can,” Fili says. All products bound for grinding are sprayed with organic acid. And after each belt rolls over, it’s sanitized. All packaging materials and box-making, the latter of which has its own air supply, are separated from the fab area. Air and vacuum pumps plus motors are located on the roof or in basement. All utilities come up through the floor. The plant doesn’t have condensation problems created by temperature differentials from warm water and hot water due to its climate control system, Davis says. Davis and Fili visited facilities in various industries and countries to design in and maximize food safety in their new harvesting and fab plants, but Davis adds, “If people don’t execute their jobs properly – we have nothing.” During construction, Davis boosted refrigeration capabilities by up to 50 percent to prepare for future needs. GOP also increased insulation in the roof and walls by 50 percent. And the harvesting plant contains four boilers, although engineers said only one was needed. “We do the same amount of cattle and now use less water,” Davis says. Any potential downtime problems foreseen were designed out of the new plants...whether it was optimizing refrigeration or utilities, Davis says. “We have had a great payback,” he adds. Computers operate all utilities and ramp them in and correlate the demand with the supply, which is another big advantage, Davis says. “We haven’t had many discussions on downtime in the last 20 years,” Fili says. “When a system is taken off for maintenance, no one even knows it.” A clean plant is a safe plant. Some plants utilize large, overhead jack shafts to drive lines, which contain oil, grease, dust, dirt and grime, Davis says. “On our floor, there are small, blue motors [used by the auto

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Meat&Poultry - December 2011

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