The drive to enhance meat safety may lead to increased use
of rapid chilling in the red meat industry
by Bryan Salvage, editor
Rapid chilling, the process of quickly cooling down meat without freezing it solid, may heat up in the red meat industry for several reasons.
An increasing number of red meat companies are interested in chilling and freezing their products at a faster rate to enhance product quality, speed up production throughput and inhibit microbial growth.
Ralph Stoeckle, spiral freezer applications manager for Bellevue, Wash.-based Frigoscandia Food Process Systems, says rapid chilling could become more important in the red meat industry as a means of inhibiting bacterial growth.
Packers and processors will take a closer look at the operations in their plants, he predicts.
"We've seen countries where the government has taken control [to improve operations]," Stoeckle says.
Holland, for example, guarantees the safety of its food products. The International Organization for Standardization, a European philosophy that preaches standards for quality business, and Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point programs are two philosophies that work to ensure food safety.
"All of these things will drive the design of equipment and processes to provide safer foods," Stoeckle adds.
Chilling precautions
Precautions must be taken in chilling certain meat products to avoid damage. Chilled meat products can be segregated into two categories depending on their sensitivity to air temperatures, Stoeckle points out:
-- Products not sensitive to crust freezing: Recommended air temperature is -20 degrees F to 5 degrees F. Some typical products include fried hamburgers, meat pies, meat in bags, fried chicken and tray-pack chicken.
-- Products moderately sensitive to crust freezing: Recommended air temperature is 20 degrees F. Typical products include raw chicken, pizza and ready meals.
After discussing quick chilling with beef and pork packers of all sizes, as well as refrigeration and freezing system manufacturers, it appears the rapid chill process is being used primarily by pork processors. And the refrigeration medium is air instead of liquid, such as water or a brine solution.
Ron Sharples, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Issaquah, Wash.-based York Food Systems, says that rapid chilling is typically used for larger portions of meat, such as carcasses, halves, quarters or large, whole muscle meat.
Carolina Food Processors' state-of-the-art hog processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C., recently installed a rapid chill system for cooling down its hog carcasses prior to processing. It was engineered and designed in conjunction with the Danish Meat Institute and Stellar Corp. of Jacksonville, Fla.
"Because of our consultation with the Danish Meat Institute and observing certain operations in Europe, we firmly believed we would improve meat quality with the rapid chill system," says Henry Morris, executive vice president of Smithfield Packing Co., parent company of Carolina Food Processors. "It improves meat color, reduces PSE [pale, soft and exudative meat], improves the texture of the pork, reduces bacteria and increases shelf life."
York's Sharples adds: "I'm sure that yield is also an important factor. Every 1 percent that packers lose is a lot of money when millions of pounds pass through the system. If there is one issue with products that have a high value, it's how much weight that is lost during the chilling or freezing process."
Bill Bryant, marketing manager for Frigoscandia, agrees: "The quicker you can chill or freeze a product, the less dehydration you have."
Morris further explains the benefits of Carolina Food Processors' quick chill system.
"We also had goals for extending shelf life for our export business in Japan," he adds. "We're meeting and exceeding those goals, but we're still in the process of fine-tuning the operation."
Hog carcasses at Carolina Food Processors are conveyed in a serpentine fashion through a blast chill room (640 feet by 400 feet) immediately after passing over a Fat-O-Meter after slaughter. The carcasses enter a room with a temperature of -10 degrees F and a wind chill temperature of -40 degrees F.
"We chill the carcass from 100 degrees F, which is the temperature of the carcass leaving the kill floor, down to an average temperature of about 75 degrees F after two hours," Morris says. "The internal temperature is still above 70 degrees F in the deep ham muscles, but the exterior of the hog is totally frozen. The carcasses will equilibrate overnight to below 40 degrees F."
After leaving the blast chill area, the carcasses enter a cooler awaiting further processing.
Sal Sparacino, sales and marketing manager for BLC Thermal Systems (an impingement IQF refrigeration system) of Midland, Va.-based Ross Industries, says his company is also involved in quick chilling. His company's Boundary Layer Control Impingement Freezer is designed for quick chill applications.
"We're chilling sub-primals [a strip loin or tenderloin] and putting it through the system, which is already installed at one state-side operation," Sparacino says. "Depending on the size of products [strip loins, ribeyes, a tenderloin], dwell times range from 20 to 60 minutes through the system.
"With this installation, a fresh product is crust-frozen, equilibrated outside the freezer and then pressed, sliced, packaged and frozen in a matter of several hours," he adds.
Traditionally, processors take sub-primals and trim them, wrap each one, place on racks, freeze to 0 degrees to 10 degrees F, temper to 26 degrees F to 28 degrees F (about 20 hours or more), and then press and slice into portions.
"We're doing just the opposite," he adds. "When you measure the internal temperature of the sub-primal we're chilling, it doesn't move much at all. But we're putting enough chill into the product so it can be formed, sliced and packaged for distribution or inventory right from the BLC system in about two hours."
This system features a tunnel instead of a spiral configuration. A typical BLC configuration contains three belts stacked one on top of the other. Each belt has impingement air flow on the top and bottom sides. The freezer is fabricated into modules roughly 6 feet in nominal freezing length. Each module has its own evaporator and fan assembly.
"We're capitalizing on the concept of impingement technology to get rapid mechanical chilling," Sparacino points out. "Impingement is one of the first major breakthroughs in freezing technology in recent years. Impingement technology with mechanical refrigeration matches the performance of cryogenic systems [in terms of dehydration and product quality].
"From the processor's standpoint regarding mechanical operating costs, the processor is getting comparable product quality at about a half-cent to a cent a pound vs. 3 cents to 5 cents a pound for a cryogenically-frozen product," he adds.
Sparacino says his customer likes his system's three-belt design.
"They're not just putting out 10,000 pounds of a particular cut or item everyday," he adds. "The last time I was there, they did eight different products in the first four hours of my visit. With our system, there's a lot of flexibility. They can target specific temperatures for different products simultaneously-at least up to three at one given time."
Although he couldn't comment on who his client is or what it processes, Sparacino did hint his client was satisfied with the system: "Within six months of buying its first system, the company bought a second one."
Some case-ready beef is being quick chilled. For example, products like beef brisket can be found in a pseudo-fresh form at a supermarket's fresh meat counter.
"You have extended shelf life here because it's residing in a temperature range of about 26 degrees F to 28 degrees F. And generally, USDA looks at that as not being frozen," says Frigoscandia's Stoeckle. "A store keeps it in that state for a couple of days. As it thaws, it gives up some of the ice. It stays in sort of a hibernation state [in the back room].
"Then it's weighed, labels are placed on the product, and it's put out on display," he adds. "Almost all tray-packed chicken is done that way."
When asked if the rapid or quick chill process is being increasingly used in the red meat industry, he adds: "I don't see it so much. But we're getting a lot of inquiries from customers to help them develop processes which will allow them to chill a product and never freeze it. These products are generally prepared meals."
"Generally, prepared individual portions of meat would be chilled in probably 20 to 30 minutes," Stoeckle says.
"Air is important. We use a vertical-type airflow to minimize the amount of forced power through the fans and air volume requirements," he adds.
Frigoscandia has a chilling-freezing system that allows packers to chill and freeze different cuts simultaneously. It then can automatically store various cuts of boxed meat in different sections of the chilling system.
Rick Whitman, director of marketing and sales for Lodi, Calif.-based Fujitetsumo, points out that interest is growing in the rapid chilling of beef offals.
"There is a big market for offals in Europe for use in luncheon meats and other items," Whitman says. "These companies need to chill or freeze offal products and then box them.
"But when you compare what the offals are worth on the marketplace today as opposed to the costs for building such [rapid chilling/freezing] equipment, the return on investment isn't there yet," he adds. "The technology is going to have to become more affordable."