The meat processing industry is an important sector, generating an annual turnover of $360b worldwide, including €160.6b in the EU-28, and is forecasted to grow at a rate of 14% per annum over the next years. This positive outlook is associated with a growing consumer demand for processed ready-to-eat sliced meat products, particularly in small package forms, which helps to prevent spoilage and are more convenient for the consumer. In line with this trend, the production of sliced meat products has steadily increased over recent years, and meat processing companies have made significant investments in the installation of slicing rooms. For example, in Spain sliced meat products already account for 80% of the total market value of meat products commercialized through supermarkets and hypermarkets.
Slicing costs are substantial, accounting for about 37% of the final product cost. A significant part of this cost is associated to meat wasted during slicing, which depends on the performance of the machinery and on meat texture. The presence of textural defects, particularly soft textures and holes, results in broken slices during high-speed cutting, which are either wasted or used to produce low-value products.
Textural defects in meat may be due to a poor optimization of the production process. However, more often they are related to the presence of “Pale Soft Exudative” (PSE) meat in the process. This type of meat is characterized by a low capacity to retain water and a low binding capacity of meat tissues, resulting in soft and dry textures that persist even after processing (cooking or curing), and freezing. As a result, when PSE meat is sliced at high speed (up to several hundred slices per minute), meat tissue is fragmented rather than cut, resulting in the generation of meat waste, either in the form of small fragments or broken slices.
Even if PSE meat is not sliced, it severely affects the quality of the resulting products, for which also in this case it is desirable to establish appropriate procedures to detect, sort, and process PSE meat.
The development of the PSE defect depends on complex genetic, nutritional and animal management factors which are very difficult to control. As a consequence, meat processors must cope with the presence of PSE meat in their processes. Presently, there is not any effective solution to avoid the impact that PSE meat has on their production yield, and on the quality of their products.
In the frame of the European Project SLICEWATCH we have developed a non-invasive solution to detect textural defects. This innovative solution is implemented in the form of an industrial scanner, which allows scanning meat parts on a piece by piece basis, at scanning rates of up to 600 pieces per hour.
