The Australian meat industry-led partly by South Burnett Meat Works Cooperative Association Ltd.-is building its export market through innovation and technology
by Bryan Salvage, editor
Late last year, Meat Marketing & Technology Editor Bryan Salvage visited the Commonwealth of Australia. During his one-week stay, Salvage met with packers, government inspection officials and research scientists. He also toured several packing and processing plants. The following is part one of an occasional series on the highlights of his trip.
In 1879, 40 tons of frozen beef, lamb and mutton sailed from the far-away Commonwealth of Australia to England-thus, marking Australia's initial entry into meat exporting.
Since that time, Australia has become the largest beef exporter in the world. One of the country's major beef packers is South Burnett Meat Works Cooperative Association Ltd.
Located in Queensland, the company processes cattle into a variety of frozen and chilled boxed-beef products for export. Its main export markets are (in descending order): Japan, the United States, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mexico.
"We are processing manufacturing meat and primal cuts," says John Hatton, marketing manager and consultant veterinarian for the company. "Some products are frozen and individually wrapped. Our primals are vacuum-packed and chilled. Chilled is a big part of our business.
"Ours is the first meat plant in Australia to have a fully integrated AQIS [Australian Quarantine & Inspection Service] quality assurance system from start to finish," he adds.
This system was established by the Australian government to change the emphasis from inspectoral control to company responsibility for quality. All Australian plants approved for export are subject to inspection by AQIS.
Uniquely Australian
South Burnett, like many Australian packers, utilizes the Halal ritualistic slaughtering technique for all cattle to satisfy Muslim requirements for meat consumption.
"Most Australians don't realize that 200 million of their next-door neighbors in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are Muslim," Hatton says. "Since we put in the Muslim kill four months ago, we haven't had as much blood clotting from broken vessels."
The plant gets its energy source from coal, and processes between 700 to 900 cattle a day during two shifts. The new slaughter floor, which cost almost $2.5 million, wasn't built for high production.
"We could slaughter 1,000 head a day and probably maximize our running costs," Hatton claims. "But once you start pushing product through plants, people lose their perspective. They become very production-oriented, rather than food-oriented. We're trying to process beef at efficient levels, rather than maximum levels."
South Burnett's computerized animal/herd identification system and product identification system allows the company to track product from insemination to slaughter, from boning to freezing, from packaging to invoicing, and from export documentation to delivery.
The company has other distinctive operations in its plant. For example, a modified Temple Grandin-designed animal handling system ushers the cattle to the knocking platform via a roller conveyor.
Offals are transported to offal processing by a chain conveyor designed by South Burnett. The company uses an offal processing machine imported from France.
After removing the rumen, it is placed into this machine. During first-stage processing, the machine washes all the gut material out of it.
"It's a computer-driven program with special temperature and time requirements," Hatton says.
During the second stage, the machine polishes the lining of the intestines to make it a food-grade product.
"This product is extremely popular and sells very well in Asia," Hatton claims.
South Burnett also purchased a conveyor pan evisceration system, which Hatton says is uncommon to the United States.
In search of tenderness
Hatton insists the main challenge beef producers face is coming up with consistent product tenderness followed by taste. But a tender cut of beef doesn't necessarily ensure it will taste great, according to various studies.
"We're attempting to measure tenderness," Hatton says. "We're in the fourth week of the program of trying to give the producer as much information as possible."
The company has installed a video image analysis system, supplied by the Meat Research Corp., that is placed on the slaughter floor and in the chillers.
"On the slaughter floor, the beef goes past a scanner at normal speeds and is photographed," Hatton points out. "The VIA system then analyzes how much fat is in the carcass based on the reflectivity of the fat."
After chilling for at least 18 hours, the body is quartered, he adds. An assessment of the cut surface between the 10th and 11th rib is carried out by the VIA machine.
"Parameters such as eye-muscle area, rib fat thickness, meat color, fat color and marbling are measured," Hatton says. "We then correlate that particular information with slaughter data. This gives us an even more accurate carcass yield. We're trying to commercialize this process.
"It [the VIA system] takes every conceivable variation you could want of the body; the length, width-any parameter you think is important in giving you yield," Hatton adds. "The level of fat in the product is correlated to the level of yield in the boning room at the end of each day."
Producers are then able to see the quality of their animals based on readings supplied within the feedback sheet generated by computer and dispatched by South Burnett.
"We need to know the real value of an animal," Hatton notes. "The real value encompasses so many things such as the worth of the offals, as well as the meat and the hide."
South Burnett is aware that the market in Japan and South Korea prefers grain-fed beef with a sweeter flavor than that favored in the United States.
In researching rumen technology, Hatton says the company discovered it can feed cattle to get a certain flavor.
"Flavor is just the taste of fat," Hatton claims. "We can feed cattle so they have less saturated fat or more polyunsaturated fat. This is accomplished by specially coating fat fed to cattle to by-pass the rumen, thus turning cattle into single-stomach animals.
"We've got about 6,000 cattle on that program with contractors," he adds. "That technology will pay off."
Three boning areas
The plant has three boning areas: a mechanical deboning room, a standard quarter boning room, and a training/domestic processing boning room. Instead of a boner having to process by using his own weight to pull the cuts, a mechanical deboning machine pulls the cuts, Hatton says.
The boner uses his knife more like a pencil to assist in the cutting. The machine speed can be changed by altering the computer settings.
"This system has two advantages," Hatton notes. "We think it will pick up the efficiency by about 40 percent at boning bull and cow manufacturing meat for the United States. Plus it can be used for hot boning, which is why we bought it in the first place."
South Burnett's main standard quarter boning room primarily processes chilled beef for its major customer-Japan. Beef is processed on one main line with two chains. The beef is boned on the rail, sliced on the tables and packaged in another room.
An automatic bag machine, which cuts the bag to fit the cuts of meat, is being tested and is saving the company about 7 cents a bag by eliminating material waste.
"That's significant because it probably saves us $60,000 a year just using one bagger," Hatton says. "If it works commercially, we'll buy four of these machines.
"We would like the bagger to analyze the size of a cut via a video image system to make the bag size required for a particular cut so there is even less waste in bag materials," he adds. "We think the savings we can get on a full bag machine with video analysis of cut size could be as great as $300,000 or $400,000 for one year for a plant of our size."
After the bag is vacuum packaged, it passes through a hot shrink tunnel and then into 0 degrees C (32 degrees F) water for 25 seconds.
"It takes the heat out of the cut and starts the chilling process at a faster pace," Hatton points out. "It also seems to [harden up] the top layer of fat."
The third boning room is used for training workers and for manufacturing products for the domestic market.
Packing is done in a separate room. After the meat is placed in a carton, each carton passes through an MQ27 (TOBEC) machine, which analyzes the level of meat and fat composition in the carton. The computer then communicates with the labeling printer to put a seal with correct information on the product.
When frozen products exit the blast freezer, they go straight into 20-foot or 40-foot piggy-back shipping containers (for trucks, rail and sea-going vessels) designated for specific customers. Chilled beef is vacuum-bagged and packed into the containers. This prevents double handling of products and accidentally leaving products in a storage room.
South Burnett has a policy of adding value to its by-products if it's possible, as well as having an interest in adding value to hides.
"We bring the hides up from the slaughter floor; chill them during a period of time; we load them out to the tannery which is about 400 meters from the main plant [and not a part of South Burnett]; and they're processed into wet blue hides," Hatton says.
"This operation has been running for about three years, and it has been quite successful," he adds. "We don't wet blue every hide. Some hides have more value in the salted form."
South Burnett has plans for the blood products market.
"Once we rebuild a certain area of the plant, we'll try to enter the fractionated blood products market specializing in the pharmaceutical and food trades," Hatton notes.
During the past six years, South Burnett has been developing a computerized management-analysis information system.
"We know the yields of all our products going through the plant," Hatton says. "We can tell you very accurately the profit or loss on almost every carcass that goes through our plant.
"We are breaking our line into 14 different major characteristics on a variance list, and we can access the profitability in every area," he adds. "I can tell you the recoveries from meat yield, offals, by-products, hide counts, and all of our processing costs."
Computing the yields
In each product line the company processes, it has the number of head, the dentition [used for age estimation], the average fat, average age, average weight-so South Burnett has a good idea on what its yields should be based on fat scores, Hatton points out.
"We graphically analyze [on paper] a lot of data so it's easier to understand when you're talking about performance," he says. "Our daily turns are graphed, and we analyze our meat meal production.
"We work out the number of cattle processed in the theoretical yields, we do our blood meal production with total number of cattle processed-their weights-and what their theoretical yields should be.
"If we see a yield pick up or drop, we want to know why," Hatton adds. "We do a total production and yield analysis [and compare] against theoretical values.
"We do a complete weight summary in every department in the plant," he points out. "In the feedlot, we're doing a similar thing. We're trying to graphically analyze as much as possible so it's simpler for department heads to understand what waste is occurring."
South Burnett is in the process of installing a training and research center.
"We believe as a company that our future lies in staying with the technology and efficiencies," Hatton says. "We work with universities and colleges in Queensland to gain synergies in further developing our people.
Editor's Note: MM&T will publish another feature on Australian meat packing and processing companies, as well as an interview with Australian Quarantine & Inspection Service officials, later this year.
In addition, a special five-page advertorial on the Australian beef industry will be published in the June issue of MM&T.