Optimizing carcass cooling can boost processing plant margins

Glacier FarmMedia – A sensor-based system for carcass cooling could save processing plants considerable money while also improving meat quality.

Read Also

Ukrainians in Canadian agriculture: Yevgen Mykhaylichenko

Yevgen Mykhaylichenko is trying to bring more autonomous systems to Canadian agriculture, and he’s using knowledge acquired abroad to do…

The innovation by Manitoba-based Mode40 recently received funding from the Canadian Agri-Food Automation and Intelligence Network (CAAIN) Beef and Pork Primary Processing Automation and Robotics program.

Why it matters: Margins are slim for the meat processing sector, and the pandemic put a spotlight on its labour shortages, worker safety, productivity and supply chain disruptions that affected the entire food system.

“I’ve been in farming since I could walk as a Manitoban, born and raised, and spent 20 years working for one of Canada’s largest food companies focused on extracting margin from the integrated food chain,” says Mode40 co-founder and CEO Cameron Bergen.

“When it comes to how to help the red meat business be sustainable, we landed on the area of carcass cooling. It’s a fundamental problem and the optimization of what can be done within that system is significant.”

Their work with pork has identified savings from 50 cents to $1.50 per animal processed by standardizing and automating carcass cooling – value that isn’t being captured. How a carcass is cooled is directly linked to meat quality, the ability to cut meat properly, and ultimately, the cutout yields of primals and sub primals.

“You want your cuts to be as accurate as possible to maximize the value of the meat. Those precision cuts can make or break for the margin you’re generating,” he says, noting that improper cooling can make meat very hard or very soft to cut.

Mode40’s system includes a sensor kit mounted inside carcass coolers to collect environmental data that is integrated with key carcass weight data. An artificial intelligence algorithm performs calculations and alerts plant workers so they can make the necessary adjustments – usually time and duration of the cooling cycle – to optimize carcass cooling.

The system runs autonomously and although cooling system type, age and condition varies greatly across Canadian meat processors, the Mode40 system will take that information into account when it makes real-time, location-specific recommendations.

“It’s important to approach this so that we can walk into any cooler tomorrow and apply it. We haven’t gone through a full set of evaluations yet for cost, but it will be an affordable solution,” Bergen says.

“With this system, you have less moisture loss from excess cooling and use less energy because you’re cooling less.”

The company had previously won an Innovation Solutions Canada award for the same innovation. The latest funds are being used to scale up the system and move it toward commercialization.

Testing of a lab version with university partners is scheduled for the next six months, followed by rollout to commercial meat plants for a further 12 months to evaluate its performance. A few open spots are available in the trial, notes Bergen, who would love to see participants from Ontario and Eastern Canada join the project.

“We’ve seen some of this work done in other industrial environments, but a lot of products are reactive where a sensor sends a signal when something has gone bad,” he adds.

“The world of reactive means you’ve already lost money. We need to know and prevent an issue before it occurs.”

Long-term, Mode40’s goal is to apply that approach to the entire livestock chain to optimize production, and it has launched a new joint venture company to create an integrated animal science-based software platform to move that vision forward.

P&P Optica of Waterloo was the other recipient of funding from CAAIN’s beef and pork processing robotics and automation program. The company is known for its technology using the power of light to measure chemistry and improve meat quality and safety. Through its CAAIN funding, it will use artificial intelligence to connect pork production and processing practices to meat quality.

CAAIN is a national organization founded with funding from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada to support tech-based solutions for the agri-food sector.

– This article was originally published at the Manitoba Co-operator.