Meat + Poultry - April 2006 - 51

the ability to apply variable water pressure, he adds.
Next, beef carcasses are steam vacuumed, which is a common practice in
many of today's beef plants. Steam vacuuming focuses on areas of the carcass
where the hide was as penetrated with
a straight knife, typically anywhere between the chin and tail.
One area where Swift has used
technology to enhance a step is in the
use of room-temperature organic acid
throughout the process and supplementing the process using hot (about
130ºF) organic acid. "Heat applied
with organic acid now is more effective
in killing pathogens than a cold organic
acid," says Mirtsching.
Swift has used the pre-evisceration
step of pre-washing and using an organic rinse since the mid 1990s, a pro-

cess "designed to flush fine particles
of dust from the exterior of carcass,"
he says, which removes bacteria as
quickly as possible to avoid bacterial
attack on and penetration of the carcass. This step has become the norm
for large processors.
After evisceration and splitting,
carcasses pass through pasteurization
chambers, where 170ºF water is sprayed
for more than five seconds, killing E.
Coli O157:H7 and other pathogens.
Mirtsching says the step provides a 1.5
log to 2 log reduction and is followed
by a cold water rinse to preserve meat
color and quality.
The next step is the thermal organic
rinse, mentioned previously, which reduces 99.999 percent of pathogens as
part of the multiple hurdle approach,
followed by the cold carcass sanitizing

step, which is the organic acid solution
applied as a spray mist in the last step
just prior to carcass disassembly.
When it comes to handling hog carcasses, Swift uses the industry standard processes of a scald/singe process
followed by steam vacuuming and an
organic rinse step before the carcass
if further processed. Fewer steps are
required, in part because external
loads on hogs coming into the plant
are naturally lower in the absence of
hides. "The internal loads are lower
too because of the nature of the hog,
which is a single-stomach animal vs. a
cow, which is a multistomach animal,"
says Mirtsching.
We would like to hear from you- your comments
and questions about this article are welcome.
E-mail the author at: jcrews@sosland.com

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April 2006

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Meat + Poultry - April 2006

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