Meat+Poultry - December 2018 - 40

GLOBAL MARKETS

Individual cuts of beef
can be traced back
to the animal through
DNA testing.

40

Foyle operates six sites and nine business
units across Ireland and the United Kingdom.
The company employs 1,150 workers. Foyle
is a single-species processor slaughtering
7,000 head of cattle per week. Five percent
are killed in the Republic of Ireland and 10
percent are killed in the UK. The company
slaughters approximately 700 Aberdeen Angus
per week in addition to some Hereford. Foyle
also operates an organic-approved plant in
Gloucester. Estimated income in 2018 is 400
million sterling ($513 million), Armstrong says.
Seventy percent of Foyle's beef production is
destined for the UK and Ireland while 30 percent
is exported to customers in the US, Canada and
the Philippines among other countries. Retail
and foodservice customers of Foyle include
Tesco, Costco Wholesale, Radisson Blue Group,
McDonald's, Burger King, Ahold Delhaize and
the Wetherspoon pub chain.
As of this year, Foyle is selling frozen patties,
chilled burgers, skin-pack steaks, primals and
offal. Bulk minced meats are a mainstay of
production as the popularity of ready-to-eat
meals grows among younger consumers. A
significant capital investment for the company
was the installation of four Sensor X machines.
"It uses a system of x-ray technology to take
the meat used for grinding to ensure there's no
contamination, number one, and number two
that we've got the correct CL (chemical lean)
levels for grinding," Armstrong explains.

MEAT+ POULTRY | 12.18 | www.meatpoultry.com

"We have four out of five machines that
exist in the whole of Ireland and the UK," he
adds, "so that's roughly about a million euros
a site. It gives you loads of benefits from the
accuracy of the CL point of view but also from
contamination point of view and integrity
of product."
Foyle also is one of the few meat processors
to conduct DNA testing of each carcasss.
A worker takes a swab sample as the
carcass comes down the line, and the
information is added to the data supplied by
the AIM system - the age of the animal, sex,
breed and the producer.
DNA samples - on the same day of kill - are
immediately sent to IdentiGen, a leading
provider of DNA identification solutions with
laboratories in Ireland, UK, US and Canada.
IdentiGen processes and stores the samples.
Foyle's customers with access to the IdentiGen
system can, independently and without the
company's knowledge, ask for traceability on
a sirloin or a mince. "It's really gold-plated
traceability," Armstrong says.
"We DNA sample every animal," he adds,
"so, we can take a steak and we can tell
you the animal it came from and the whole
history of that animal. We're one of the few
that are doing it. Not everyone is doing it; we
do it for absolutely every animal. We've more
information probably on our animals in Ireland
than we do our people."
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Meat+Poultry - December 2018

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