Scientists' roles growing more important in ever-changing industry
By Bryan Salvage, Editor
Although there are a lot of gambles and "unknowns" facing industry, there is one thing processors can be sure of: Science will play a greater role in shaping and regulating the meat industry in the future.
This premise was reinforced as meat and allied-industry scientists delivered a wide range of business and technical presentations during the 47th Annual Reciprocal Meat Conference, which was hosted by Penn State University. Sponsored by the American Meat Science Association in cooperation with the National Live Stock and Meat Board and the Penn State University meat science team, this year's RMC attracted 200 Meat Science Association members (consisting primarily of university and industry meat scientists from around the world), as well as 90 graduate students.
General sessions, as well as special sessions included in the RMC's Second Science and Technology Reciprocation Fair, addressed a range of industry and technical topics like animal welfare and handling, sensory analysis, meat quality, microbiology, muscle biochemistry, nutrition labeling, biotechnology, water-holding capacity, implementing a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point program, the ISO 9000 certification process, veal production and marketing challenges, effectively interacting with the media, gene mapping, and more.
Special poster sessions highlighting university research projects on meat topics were also displayed throughout the program.
Session highlights
During a session on food safety and muscle foods inspection, speakers concluded that an industry-wide total quality management program would be more efficient than increased enforcement of USDA's zero-tolerance policy, which requires removal of all contaminants from the carcass, regardless of size.
Gary Smith, professor of meat science at Colorado State University, said: "As we have attempted to monitor the pathogen count, zero tolerance isn't working as well as we would like. In fact, we aren't reducing the pathogen count."
William Sischo, assistant professor of veterinary science at Penn State University, added: "Essentially, if you're testing to keep [pathogens] out of the system, it's eventually going to come back and bite you. No matter how thorough your test, something will eventually work its way through."
Speakers suggested extending HACCP programs to farms, monitoring and quarantining livestock before they arrive at the packing plant as opposed to massive testing.
"We're after pathogen reduction, not pathogen elimination," said Richard Carnevale, FSIS assistant administrator. "The idea of implementing HACCP on the farm is just that. It's just trying to identify practices that decrease the possibility of pathogens making it into the packing plant."
America's foodservice industry has a special challenge in reducing pathogens.
"We have to respond to multiple masters," said Bob Harrington, director of technical services for the National Restaurant Association. "We have to ultimately do what our customers say they want, and people are coming back to rare meat."
In a session on gene mapping, experts told meat scientists that meat composition and quality could be greatly affected in the future by the advances industry makes in gene mapping. This technology allows researchers to closely examine and analyze DNA.
Meat animal gene mapping would allow the industry to identify animals with the genetic potential to produce offspring with carcass traits that are in demand in the marketplace, such as tenderness and leanness.
Research in this area is beneficial if it can "increase the accuracy of prediction of breeding values and allow for prediction of breeding values for traits in which data are difficult to obtain," said Craig Beattie of the Roman L. Hruska U.S. Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Neb.
Jeremy Taylor, leader of the animal genetics group at Texas A&M University, said current checkoff-funded research is on its way to locating and cloning a number of genes in cattle. The project, being coordinated through the Meat Board, utilizes 32 Angus/Brahman back-cross families to look for associations between gene markers and traits influencing carcass merit.
"We have the capability to have 1,000 [markers] by the end of the year," Taylor said. "The framework is there for us."
Although gene mapping is not simple, the process is worth it.
"As we move into the 21st century, meat science is going to be impacted by the efforts that are going on in today's gene mapping projects," said Jeff Savell, professor of animal science at Texas A&M University.
Looking ahead
Professor Bob Rust of Iowa State University, this year's RMC chairman, told MM&T that university meat scientists must be at the forefront of meat safety initiatives, such as HACCP.
"I hope that in time, university and industry meat scientists will be called on more as a source of information and direction regarding the [meat industry] regulatory process," he added.
Rust echoed the intensifying industry call for science-based regulations and inspection operations. He gives one example of why this is needed.
"An inspector recently ordered the replacement of a slicer belt in a federally inspected plant because it was discolored," he noted.
"There are hundreds of reasons why that belt was stained-none of which have anything to do with food safety. Some of the spots were probably inspection ink. Where is the science behind that interpretation of a regulation?"
Meat scientists are needed to help regulate industry.
"Our manufacturing today deals with some very sophisticated science," Rust said. "In some cases, we're still exploring the 'whys' of something happening in the manufacture of a meat product.
"It has just been within my career that we have rather explicitly delineated what a meat emulsion is," he continued. "The individual who regulates [the meat] industry has to be a qualified meat scientist.
"A veterinarian may be trained in animal pathology, but he or she is not trained in the science of meat manufacturing," he added. "Traditionally, meat inspection has been controlled by the veterinary profession. The science of meat processing is far too complicated to be regulated by someone who is not a professionally trained meat scientist."
In discussing HACCP, Rust urged industry to focus beyond just microbiological hazards.
"Let's not lose sight that HACCP deals not only in microbiological hazards, but chemical and physical hazards," Rust pointed out. "Let's not lose sight of the biological hazards that are not microbiological. For example, we still have trichina as a potential hazard."