The Process of Food Automation in the Poultry Industry

Food and Beverages | Thursday, November 25, 2021

Where human labor is replaced by automation, food manufacturing becomes safer.

FREMONT, CA: Food safety is, understandably, a top priority in today's chicken sector. Everybody wants to consume safe food. Although the poultry meat supply chain extends beyond the processing facility, our industry is ultimately held accountable when the food produced is unsafe. That is why all production procedures must be committed to food safety. Fortunately, there are numerous methods available for ensuring the safe handling of chicken food. Effective cleaning, hygiene, cross-contamination prevention, and little human intervention are only a few critical components. By automating the process, these areas of focus may be addressed much more quickly.

Not hands, but eyes: The most dangerous pollutant in a chicken processing plant is human hands, and each contact can be polluting. Where a procedure is automatable, machines should perform the labor. In an ideal world, human intervention would be confined to supervision through eyes rather than hands.

The product should pass through all phases of the process as efficiently as feasible. Not only do buffers require costly double handling, but they also expose the product to temperature increases, which promote the growth of dangerous germs and reduce shelf life. The objective should be to get items from the live bird hang-on to the cold store as rapidly as possible.

Secure transport: The conveyance must be automated to transport chicken goods securely from point A to point B. Once the cargo is freed from the shackles, conveyors take over the safe conveyance, ensuring the product's integrity is maintained, apart from safely and hygienically transporting items to the next process step. Human hands do not flip, drop, tumble, or touch the products. The more things are moved during the process, the more protein they lose and their shelf life shorter. Once products reach the packing area, tray carriers are ideal for transporting them in a food-safe manner. The tray carriers are suspended from a typical overhead conveyor in this computer-controlled system. They efficiently distribute work over numerous price/weight labelers, preventing the accumulation of product buffers. It eliminates human contact and maximizes floor space.