Hot Off the Grill: Quality Meat in Demand

The U.S. summer barbecue season will be heating up as the temperatures start to rise so that means more grilling outside. And more grilled meat means that meat processing plants will have to scramble to keep up with demand, ensure their facilities can handle the variety of offerings, and be able to ship quality products to supermarkets, butcher shops, and retailers so consumers can enjoy their holiday summer cookouts.

Although these goals have become a challenge because of food shortages, reduced labor resources, temporary plant shutdowns, and limited processing during the global health crisis, consumers will continue to seek quality meats to sizzle on their grill.

Supermarket News reports that “among traditional barbecue foods, hamburgers will be served at two-thirds of surveyed shoppers’ first summer gatherings. Hot dogs of all types and chips will be on the menus of more than 40% of shoppers’ lists. (We will note that the online news outlet also reports that about one-fifth of hosts plan to broaden their menus with veggie burgers and meat alternatives.)

This summer, meat processors will be asked to supply larger cuts of beef. The Travel reports that cooking meats ‘low and slow’ is becoming more popular. The most popular meats to cook using this method are ribs, pork shoulder, chuck steak, whole chickens, and beef brisket. Those who like to barbecue and smoke their meats believe that giving the meat more time to cook at a low temperature gives it that desirable fall-off-the-bone tender texture.

The demand for meat products is not just a U.S. trend. Specialty Food Magazine reports that over the past year, data has shown that “more and more Brits have visited independent retail butchers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Not only are more people visiting – 630,000 more households compared to the previous year – but they’re also spending nearly 50% more per shopping trip compared to other retailers when purchasing meat. The most popular options on the menu were chops, roasting joints and sausages.” They have boosted their number of garden barbecues and started to adopt the “American-style options, with a focus on ‘long, slow smoking and cooking processes’, meaning that cheaper, lesser-used cuts could be in demand.”

With the turmoil of the availability of meats and the industry having to adapt to supplying more variety to keep up with demand, meat processors will have to be even more mindful of keeping consumer safety at the forefront.

Most meat suppliers utilize food weighing and inspection equipment, including food metal detectors and food X-ray inspection technology, as part of the food safety quality programs. However, as we have written about in the past, meat brings several challenges when it comes to ensuring it doesn’t contain metal contaminants (like worn machinery parts or broken off cutting instruments) because of something called ‘product effect.”

Product effect involves the conductive properties of the food that can mimic a foreign object, and cause the detector to incorrectly signal a physical contaminant. So the machine operator is forced to compromise the sensitivity of the detector to avoid false rejections. Less sensitive settings could mean more difficulty detecting pesky metal contaminants.

With fluctuating meat offerings, the processor faces a product that is moist and bloody, with varying temperature, salt content and product sizes — all of which cause product effect to vary, as well. This makes consistent foreign object detection difficult, and increases the potential for costly scrap or rework, or missed contaminants.

One way to alleviate these issues is to use the latest multiscan metal detection technology. With multiscan technology, the operator picks a set of up to five frequencies from 50 kHz to 1000 kHz and the equipment scans through each frequency at a very rapid rate, effectively acting like five metal detectors in one. As a result, the detectors can run a frequency close to ideal for most any type of metal encountered. The result is that the probability of detection increases significantly and escapes essentially disappear. Sensitivity is optimized because the optimal frequency is running for each type of metal of concern.

The Cattlemen’s Beef Board And National Cattlemen’s Beef Association reported recently that due to the” various impacts of COVID-19 leading to increased demand, the retail meat department had a tremendous year: all fresh meat sales increased by 19%, from $49.5 billion in 2019 to $59.1 billion this past year, adding $9.6 billion in added value.” The report goes on to say that” per capita consumption of beef is forecasted to increase 0.4 pounds to 58.5 pounds per person. This shows that although the beef and protein industry experienced disruptions in normal business operations, consumers still demand high quality beef in their diets.”

High quality also means no physical contaminants contained in those meats that are hot off the grill.

If you want to learn more about metal detection in the meat industry, watch the 30-minute on-demand webinar: Overcoming the Challenges of Foreign Object Detection in Meat Processing