Meat + Poultry - August 2009 - 33

FOOD INGREDIENT SOLUTIONS * ADVERTORIAL

THE MEAT

GREEN PROCESSING

OF THE MATTER
including animal welfare and safe food.
"We've had a poultry welfare council for
years, and the purpose of the council is
to insure the health of the birds and their
humane treatment," DeYoung says. "We're
also very involved in efforts to train our
contract growers, and in fact, everyone
in the company exposed to live birds."
DeYoung says Perdue is also taking
steps to maintain the health of the company's employees with an extensive employee-wellness program. "Our company
is one of the few in the industry to establish and offer wellness centers for our
employees, including clinics and doctors,"
she said. "We have the Perdue Health Improvement Program. Our employees are
screened for high blood pressure, diabetes, problems if they smoke, so they can
have early interventions and treatments.
These activities are part of good corporate sustainability programs."
New ways to reduce environmental
impact in its food-processing operations
are top sustainability goals for Austin,
Minn.-based Hormel Foods. "This year,
we are preparing to set new goals for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions,"
says Julie H. Craven, vice president of
corporate communications. Other sustainability goals are establishing individual benchmarks for measuring energy
consumption, solid waste management,
air emissions and water consumption
at the company's 41 U.S. manufacturing facilities.
Corporate sustainability is not limited
to environmental concerns. "We use the
term to refer to the broader issue of being a sustainable company, including both
the environment and society," she says.
Hormel has published two corporate
responsibility reports. "People are a very
important part of our sustainability efforts," Craven says, noting 56 percent of
employees have been at the company for
more than five years. She points out the
company's injury rates are consistently
equal to or below the Bureau of Labor
Statistics industrial average for NAICS
3116 Animal Slaughtering and Processing.
Hormel's processing includes utilizing
industry-leading animal-welfare practices
and progress toward achieving its 2007

goals related to water use, energy use,
solid waste reduction and air emissions.
"Last year, Hormel exceeded its water
use reduction target and completed 44
packaging reduction projects," Craven
says. "Concerning animal welfare, the
company opened a state-of-the-art hogholding facility at its Austin, Minn. plant.
It also endorsed the National Pork Board's
Pork Quality Assurance Plus and Transport Quality Assurance programs
by requiring individuals working with hogs to
have one or both
certifications.
"Hormel's sustainability efforts
Craven
include a holistic
approach to looking at our energy and
water consumption, as well as examining what materials are used in producing products and how we reduce
waste," she adds.

Expert analysis by
Rick Cassidy, BindMax VP
of product development

Q: Natural ingredients that are
functional are becoming very
popular among meat and
poultry companies in the last 2
years. What challenges do these
companies face in working with
these natural ingredients?
A: 1. When you make meat and
poultry products without sodium
phosphate, you can get lower
cook yields.
2. When you make cured meat
products without sodium nitrite
and sodium erythorbate you can
have less intense cured meat color
and take longer for the cured
color to develop.
3. When you make meat and
poultry products without sodium
lactate and sodium diacetate, you
can expect a shorter shelf life.

Importance of water
At the Univ. of Georgia, in the heart of
poultry country, Dr. Brian Kiepper, assistant professor of biological and agricultural engineering and poultry science,
who also works in agricultural extension,
has made environmental water conservation and re-use his main focus. He
says agriculture, particularly water-dependent meat and poultry processing,
has been environmentally sustainable
for a long time.
"Agriculture is criticized for high water use, but agriculture is a mostly nonconsumptive user; we put water back,"
he says.
Water re-use has become a very hot
topic in sustainability. "On the poultry
side of meat processing, it's nothing new.
With HACCP beginning in meat and poultry processing in the early 1990s, an increasing use of water made processors
realize more water conservation was
needed. HACCP resulted in single-point
re-use and recharging of chiller water in
poultry processing, for example.
"Now, there is a great deal of multipoint re-use of water," Kiepper explains.
www.MEATPOULTRY.com

4. If you make a natural meat
item you cannot use dextrose or
corn syrup solids, so you must use
more expensive cane sugar, raw
turbinado sugar, or organic cane
juice solids, all of which cost more.
We want to hear from you!
Submit your questions directly
to Rick Cassidy, and they may
appear in future months of
'The Meat of The Matter.'

To speak with Rick Cassidy
directly email rick@bindmax.com
or call 800-906-9195.

Bindmax
I

August 2009 bindmax.com
I MEAT&POULTRY

http://www.MEATPOULTRY.com http://www.2009bindmax.com

Meat + Poultry - August 2009

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