No time for waste: technical developments in meat harvesting

Meat harvesting, the process of optimally scraping residual meat off animal carcasses, is a fast-moving industry subject to many of the megaforces that will dominate both production and consumption in the near future. This article provides an overview of the most important technical developments in the meat-harvesting industry up to this day, as well as a projection of the technical requirements of tomorrow, in relation to the megatrends, the challenges the world will be facing over the next several decades. If one thing becomes clear from these, it is that wastefulness is the deadly sin of today and tomorrow.

In the early 1970s, the invention of the linear press meat harvester marked a revolution in meat harvesting, offering more types of meat input as well as vastly increased capacity and quality compared to the so-called rotating systems that had been in use for poultry in the US. Whereas rotational systems focused exclusively on processing poultry meat, linear systems allowed for the processing of pork and beef as well. As a result, the harvested meat product range expanded considerably. Besides this, the lower pressure applied in linear harvesting led to a great boost in meat quality compared to the meat products from traditional rotating harvesters which have a more crushing and grinding effect, operating under high pressure.

Rotational systems allow the recovery of residual poultry meat.
Rotating system, RotoMeat: 1. Feed screw conveys input material through pre-sizer. 2. Vane pump transports bones into separating chamber. 3. Meat extrudes through chamber’s filter. 4. Auger discharges bone residue through restraint.

Once the initial uncertainties of the early adoption phase had been overcome, the late-1970s to mid-1980s were devoted to increasing product reliability. This process succeeded so well that several meat-harvesting companies today are still using machines of over 20 years old to great satisfaction and at extremely low cost.

Innovations between 1983 and 1995 were mainly driven by the demand for more capacity and higher yield. Technically, this meant higher pressure was being applied to the bones to scrape off even more residual meat. As a result, the grade, and thus the market value of the meat harvested, declined steadily as yields rose.

Earlier linear systems worked with an application of higher and unchanged pressure. Linear system, ProFIVE (high pressure). 1. Bones are fed into filling chamber. 2. Pressure causes bones to rub meat off and pass through filter. 3. Bones are retained and discharged.

By the mid-1990s, a pivotal shift took place in our thinking about meat harvesting as all efficiency-driven parameters were thrown overboard in favour of meat quality. The lower pressure applied in linear systems drove the enormous quality improvements over rotational systems, which damaged the carcasses substantially more by applying higher pressure, thus adding more bone material to the meat.

Modern linear systems operate with a more flexible application of lower pressure for a variable meat quality. This is achieved by the coordinated operation of a patented piston system.
Linear system, ProFIVE (low pressure). 1. Identical steps as with high pressure. 2. Extra step after step 2: main and counter plunger work together in a patented sequence.

Thus quality became one of the core values, which has been central to the industry ever since. Despite the somewhat lower yields due to lower pressure being applied, nothing was lost in terms of overall value. After all, scraping less meat off the carcass in a more controlled way results in a higher grade residual meat product that represents a higher market value per kg. So the value lost at one end of the production process was more than compensated for at the other. Meanwhile, consumers profited from a higher-quality end product. Thus, producers of residual meat products were able to improve their reputation in the meat chain and the consumer market significantly.

With quality now firmly and indisputably established as the industry’s core value, developments since 2000 have been marked by further optimising yield while retaining the high quality standards established earlier. One important recent step towards improving yield at good quality levels was the patented development of two-phased meat harvesting in the 2000s.  A linear system and a rotating harvester (or two linear harvesters) are run consecutively (or in tandem). The linear system ensures optimal meat quality while the second system scrapes the bones clean, thus achieving optimal yield.

Linear systems enable the recovery of poultry, pork and beef.

The latest generation of linear press meat harvesters on the market can process over 4700 kg of bones per hour and turn it into respectable quality meat. Recently, newly developed linear meat harvesters have been introduced, equipped with a patented piston system. These new machines provide adjustable meat quality with an extra yield of 4-6% (of the input weight). At the same time, the cost of maintenance has dropped and the payback time, based on additional revenue, has been reduced to less than one year.

Present and future challenges

Like other sectors, the meat industry is increasingly affected by several megatrends. These are strong, often interconnected forces in society that drive, or even demand, current and future technical innovations. We discern demographics and resources, health, environment and technology and the value shift as areas of great change and of pervasive influence on today’s and tomorrow’s world in general and on the meat industry and its technologies in particular.

The world population will continue to grow, at least until 2045. Global population growth presents a challenge in that more mouths will have to be fed from naturally limited resources such as water and food. Unless food and water technology create major breakthroughs, food and water production will reach their natural limits, and prices are likely to rise as the population increases. In this context, the meat industry carries a moral responsibility literally to make the most of meat, all with great consideration for public health. In meat harvesting, the tension between using every part of the animal fully and retaining healthy, high-quality meat products has been resolved by the latest generation of adjustable harvesters. They always deliver respectable quality, even at their highest capacity. Further optimisation of the yield at the high-quality level is a future challenge to the industry.

Another important development in society is an increasing focus on health and healthy ageing. Although meat production and consumption has been under some attack from the environmental lobby and several proponents of alternative lifestyles recently, meat harvesting may actually make a vital contribution to global health in the future through protein extraction. As the world population increases, protein needs will rise dramatically, and the demand for protein may soon outstrip its supply. That could be disastrous to global health. However, current meat-harvesting technology already allows for highly efficient protein extraction and capturing, turning what was once a ‘worthless’ waste product into a valuable health asset.

Trying not to waste any resources is part of another global concern: the environment. To capture the complex and often reinforcing relationships between the environment, demographics, resource scarcity, public health concerns and technology, the term sustainability was first coined in the 1980s. Since, it has played an ever more prominent role in our thinking about the future. For the meat processing industry, its implications are twofold: first, we turn waste into value, as the above example of residual protein extraction shows. Second, we introduce technical innovations to use the resources needed with maximum responsibility and efficiency throughout the product’s life cycle. Thus, the current generation of linear press meat harvesters should be durable, low maintenance and more energy efficient than ever. Both yield and quality should be consistently high. Support and servicing should increasingly become local to save costs and the environment. Moreover, current harvesting units must remain serviceable as well as dismountable for decades to come. Units in the near future should even be capable of further optimising the user’s integral chain management through advanced electronic waste detection systems. Thus, the meat harvester will become an advanced management and decision-making tool.

Finally, we see the recent connectivity revolution, including internet and smartphone developments, as an important driver and accelerator of a trend known as the value shift, in which people increasingly value personal autonomy and transparency. Today, openness is rapidly replacing privacy, while top-down centralism and backroom secrecy are losing support with an ever emancipating and more demanding population, as represented by relevant pressure groups and (inter)national organisations.

In response to this strong societal current, companies in the meat chain should also offer more autonomy to their users and increased transparency to consumers and society at large. With overall product quality higher than ever and the range of ready-to-cook consumer meat products continuously expanding, users of our machines are increasingly asking for autonomy in the form of user-adjustable meat quality. Thus, today’s and tomorrow’s harvesters should be able to deliver on demand either decent quantities of the highest quality or the highest possible yields of respectable quality. Having only one factory preset quality/yield ratio on a meat harvester is no longer sufficient nor acceptable to a growing number of users.

At the same time, the meat harvesting industry should not be afraid to become more transparent about its activities and the grade of meat it uses. The days mechanically separated meat tended to have a bad reputation are gone. Especially at current base quality levels, we have nothing to be ashamed of, nor to hide from the consumer: we abide by the laws of the land, we gladly comply with all safety and quality regulations imposed on us and technical advancements have enabled us to raise the standard quality of MSM to today’s high level, while wasting almost nothing. We trust that technology will continue to enable us to do so in the future.

For all the reasons outlined above, concepts such as corporate social responsibility, cradle to cradle and sustainability have taken strong hold in business, including the meat complex, and rightly so. In times of a growing, ageing and more demanding world population, dwindling resources and increased connectivity between people, the only reasonable and viable options for business are sustainability and utter transparency. They present a noble challenge, also in terms of technology, across sectors, worldwide, including our own. Thanks to the ongoing technical developments, particularly in meat harvesting, there already is very little waste in the meat chain - something to be proud of. Let us keep striving for zero waste and maximum sustainability in the near future: to feed the people, preserve the planet and make a healthy profit.

Working principle - linear versus rotating

In linear systems, the main ram transports bones into the pressing chamber and puts gentle pressure on them. While under gentle pressure, relative movement between the bones releases the meat, which is discharged over the filter. As linear systems are executed with coarse filters, a secondary filtration is needed by belt separation. In rotational systems, a feed screw from the hopper conveys input material directly into the filter. Pressure build-up inside the filter is generated through an adjustable restraint. The pressure causes meat to extrude through the filter, while the auger discharges the bone residue through the restraint.

Geert Leenen, Project manager for development of the Pro-Series of meat harvesting systems, Marel.