Meat+Poultry - August 2021 - 131

Poultry automation
Food safety is rightly a key issue in today's poultry
industry. Although the supply chain is larger than
just the processing facility, in the end, our industry
is held responsible when the produced food is
not safe. That's why all processes in the factory
must be dedicated to food safety. Good cleaning,
hygiene, prevention of cross-contamination
and the least human intervention are a few key
components. By automating the process, these
points of attention can be tackled much easier.
Marel offers processing systems capable of handling
up to 175 bpm and beyond, where products are
kept in line from live bird handling until their release
as a whole product or a cut portion. All steps in the
process are fully automated with human input being
limited to veterinary inspection, supervision and the
packing of edible giblets.
Safe transport
To move poultry products safely from A to B,
the transport must not be done by humans, but
automatically. In the primary process, Marel's
overhead conveyors take care that products don't
touch, preventing cross-contamination. Once
unloaded from the shackles, SystemFlex conveyors
take over the safe transport, maintaining the integrity
of the product. Besides bringing products safely and
hygienically to the next step, SystemFlex also reduces
human contact with the product by automatically
positioning products correctly for infeed into a
downstream machine.
Safe transfer
The importance for food safety of keeping all
processes in line means automatic line-to-line
transfer from one department to another. Decades
of experience with automated rehang systems
have resulted in the development of LineLink autotransfer
machines. From killing to evisceration and
from evisceration to air chill lines they are capable of
rehanging up to 200 products per minute at virtually
100% efficiency, without birds touching each other or
dropping on the floor. Transfer from chilling to whole
product distribution line and onwards to ACM-NT cutup
equipment is also automatic and safe.
Hygienic processing
Evisceration and giblet harvesting are areas where
poor hygiene can adversely affect food safety.
Marel automatic equipment has been designed
to keep this risk to an absolute minimum. Venting
and opening machines leave vents and attached
intestine undamaged. Marel was the first equipment
manufacturer to transfer the drawn viscera pack
to a separate processing line. Packs are transferred
with inedible, potentially contaminating organs
hanging down and away from the edible giblets. This
evisceration method, to be found in Nuova systems,
ensures the most hygienic possible process.
Benefit from automation
When talking about food safety, manual cut-up and
deboning processes, with many hands touching
the product, are far from optimal. Automatic cut-up
systems, fed intelligently by distribution systems
and software, have been a regular feature in poultry
processing plants for many years now. Two recent
Marel developments of its ACM-NT cut-up system
have a strong impact on food safety. These are the
Thigh Fillet System and Q-Wing, two completely
automatic and in-line processes, where no human
touching is involved.
Bone-free safety
It doesn't feel safe when you find a piece of bone in
meat claimed to be bone-free. To meet industry safety
and quality standards, automatic bone detection has
become an essential part of the food production.
X-ray technologies, such as Marel's SensorX, are
available to support this process and increase the
level of food safety.
SensorX detects residual bone and other unsafe
elements such as metal, stone and glass. It's a proven
ultra-reliable tool, giving the lowest number of costly
false positives.
Packing safety
In processing plants, it is in the packing department
where the most people and manual operations can
be found. In the retail breast meat and leg packing
line, RoboBatcher Flex can replace human actions.
Besides producing accurate fixed weight tray packs
automatically, this machine can also style them.
Human hands no longer have to arrange fillets on the
tray.
RoboBatcher is not the only technology available
from Marel able to batch product automatically
into fixed weight units. Marel also offers a range of
MultiHead weighers, which will batch both bone-in
and boneless portions into retail and bulk packs.
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Meat+Poultry - August 2021

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