This tool offers ergonomic advantages to meat handlers
Ergonomically-designed tools for the meatpacking industry will continue to grow in importance and demand.
Several reasons are behind this. For one, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is encouraging developments in this area in order to cut down on the amount of work force injuries.
Meatpackers, too, are searching for every way possible to decrease injuries. This is being fueled, in large part, by escalating workman's comp costs.
Ergonomic advantages
One ergonomic tool used in a meatpacking plant that may often be taken for granted is the hand-held meat hook. The only alternative to using a meat hook is using the pinch grip of an employee's fingers.
One industry insider reports that meat handlers in some meat companies in Europe, as well as Australia-and possibly even in the United States-still prefer using the old-fashioned method of handling meat by hand as opposed to using meat hooks.
"There is the mind-set that 'this is the way it is, and this is the way it has always been,' " says the president of a leading meat hook manufacturing company. "Times are changing."
This supplier says his company has had success in recently introducing its ergonomic hooks to the European meat industry. The company has appointed its first distributors in France and Germany for this product line.
Greg Worrell, a Certified Professional Ergonomist, is corporate ergonomics director for Greeley, Colo.-based ConAgra Red Meat Cos. He has been working with this supplier on new hand-held meat hook designs for several years and says: "Hand-held hooks have become increasingly popular. First, they were used in beef packing operations. And now, employees transferring from beef to pork packing operations are taking the hooks with them."
A hand-held hook has many advantages over working meat by hand including:
-- It extends the reach an extra several inches.
-- The mechanical advantage gained in a heavy pull of using the whole hand in a power-grip position.
-- The ability to securely hold a large piece of slippery meat.
-- Avoiding a pinch grip in pulling away a membrane or holding a small piece of meat.
-- It may be used as a probe in small openings to separate meat and bone or muscle seams.
-- All of the pre-mentioned may be useful in decreasing cumulative trauma disorder stressors.
There is also the safety factor. Hooks physically remove the fingers several inches from the cutting surfaces of saws or knives.
Hook evolution
The meat hook company president says his company has been making meat hooks for more than 40 years. It first offered hooks with a wooden handle to fabricate meat "quick and easy." This flat handle had curves that went into a right angle.
"There weren't a lot of design considerations for ergonomics at that time," he adds.
In the 1970s, wooden hook handles gave way to plastic ones. Soon, meat industry customers were asking for something better in meat hooks.
Cylindrical-shaped hammer handles were the next evolution, the manufacturer president says.
"I've been working with ergonomic professionals at Monfort and IBP, primarily, to come up with better ergonomically-designed hooks."
Thus, the open-grip hook was developed next. This hook has no steel going between one's fingers. It is "D" shaped; the hook comes out of the middle of the D. The round handle has ribs on it that keeps the hook from rotating in the hand. The open-grip hook also eliminates breakage of mesh safety gloves.
"We wanted to develop a handle that would more evenly distribute the forces on the hand; spread it across a broader part of the hand and decrease contact stress on any one portion of the fingers," Worrell says.
In working with Worrell last year, this supplier also developed smaller diameter hook handles for people who have smaller hands.
Worrell notes that hand-held hooks should feature the following important design considerations:
-- Rounded handles to reduce point contact and compression on the hand, and spread out the force to as much as the hand's surface as possible.
-- Multiple handle sizes.
-- A good grip pattern to reduce slip rotation and how tightly the hook must be gripped.
-- The hook between the fingers should be as thin as possible to reduce contact pressure or use an open-handed design hook.
Work is underway to design a USDA-approved comfort grip-hook and other futuristic designs.