Meat packing app from FARMSOFT:
Easy to use, complete business management for meat packing and processing businesses includes industry specific modules in the PREMIUM FARMSOFT solution. Provided with full project management, training, and support solutions to delivery a fully tailored meat processing solution that matches your exact business requirements and delivers maximum efficiency, reduces waste, and provides automatic traceability.
Processing management: each team member can see where they are in the processing stage and rapidly record data for their tasks regardless of position in processing chain (weigh box, knock box, removal, evisceration, inspection, further processing, retain rail, scale, packaging, shipping and export)
Livestock inventory management
Schedule animals in lots for processing
Animal level traceability through the entire process
RFID validation points at your chosen stages during processing
Issue animal number and tags, or alternative RFID if original missing/damaged
Capture specialized data during each step (customizable based on your requirements)
Rapidly record and label all outputs (eg: animal sides, filet etc)
Easily mark an animal(s) for condemn, drag in, suspect, test, or government agency referral
Labels and documents in multi-language format for domestic and export purposes (EU, UK, JAPAN, SAUDI ARABIA, ORGANIC, INDONESIA etc...),
Manage the ageing process
Tired of using 20 year old software to run your meat packing business on old hardware?
You can use ANY brand and model of modern fit for purpose equipment with farmsoft, we don't tell you what to buy.
Use any PC/Mac, tablet, cell with farmsoft: most stations have an inexpensive Android tablet (in washable sleeve) suspended above it on an arm for easy and rapid access, and a very low hardware cost (devices from $300)
Android ruggedized devices can read barcodes at distance (devices from $300)
Android ruggedized devices for RFID reading (devices from $400)
Use inexpensive RFID and barcode reading devices [USB] (from $100)
FARMSOFT runs in the cloud; you never need to install any software, update software; (optionally install on your own server, additional $4k)
Make changes to your hardware at any time without effecting farmsoft operations
Complete meat packing and meat processing business management. The app manages livestock deliveries, batch processing and meat packing, sales and distribution. Maintain high levels of traceability during the meat packing process.
Meat packing process: this is a sample process used by some of our meat packing clients in the USA and Australia, we will tailor the meat packing process in the app to match your specific meat packing requirements:
• Meat Sales Orders from customers are recorded in farmsoft. Export: Usually the Shipping container number (for meat export) is known well before meat packing, and can be entered onto the customer’s meat order and will carry through to the packed meat shipping process.
• PO’s issued for all raw materials (unprocessed animals) from farmsoft (animal and packaging supplies)
• Incoming meat deliveries reference the PO for rapid recording:
o A delivery receipt is printed / emailed to farmer/supplier immediately on delivery
o Each animal unit is weighed, associated to its animal reference ID/ traceability code, and assigned an inventory number by farmsoft to maximize meat traceability throughout the meat packing process
• Quality control
o Generic QC test performed on carcasses delivered.
o Reject / Accept carcass processes
• Meat Production & packing planning
o Meat Packing / Production manager uses Sales dashboard & Projections & Orders to view required production
o Batches are created and assigned to teams in specific meat cutting rooms and lines
o Alert is sent to team manager for new meat processing batches that associate the orders with the specific meat cuts that are required.
o Carcass is prepared, and packaged, and labelled with farmsoft labels (each unit is weighed)
o Fresh meat inventory created from this animal is associated to the batch which traces back to the specific carcass and supplier.
• Post meat packing QC
o QC check on packed meat product
• Logistics management for shipping packed meat:
o Shipping manager uses Logistic dashboard to group meat orders onto single trucks and set the loading order of packed meat for that truck
o Associate Transport company, truck/trailer registration
o Set shipping container info if not already on customers order
• Picking orders
o Users are told the location of specific/exact packed meat inventory that should be picked for each order
o Exporting meat products: if these details were not already on the original order, they are recorded in this process: Container number, Analog temp recorder, Digital temp recorder, seal number
o Documents (BOL, invoice, and export documents) generated and sent to various parties by admin or shipping manager.
• Pre shipping QC
o Depending on domestic/export, pre-shipping packed meat QC is performed
o Photos of packed container / truck are stored for insurance / quality purposes
• Admin
o PO’s (AP) and Invoices (AR) are exported and imported into clients Xero, Quickbooks, and other apps.
The meat packing solution requires a requires a Precision training package, click here to order one now or talk to one of our consultants about your requirements.
Meatpacking
The preparation of beef and pork for human consumption has always been closely tied to livestock raising, technological change, government regulation, and urban market demand. From the Civil War until the 1920s Chicago was the country's largest meatpacking center and the acknowledged headquarters of the industry.
CATTLE PENS, UNION STOCK YARD, C.1920S
Meat packing software
Europeans brought cattle and hogs to North America, let them forage in the woods, and slaughtered them only as meat was needed. Commercial butchering began when population increased in the towns. Since beef was difficult to preserve, cattle were killed year round and the meat sold and consumed while still fresh. Hogs were killed only in cold weather. Their fat was rendered into lard and their flesh carved into hams, shoulders, and sides, which were covered with salt and packed in wooden barrels. Packers utilized hides, but blood, bones, and entrails usually went into the nearest body of running water. City government, understandably, tried to confine these operations to the outskirts of town.
Americans took their cattle and hogs over the Appalachians after the Revolutionary War, and the volume of livestock in the Ohio River Valley increased rapidly. Cincinnati packers took advantage of this development and shipped barreled pork and lard throughout the valley and down the Mississippi River. They devised better methods to cure pork and used lard components to make soap and candles. By 1840 Cincinnati led all other cities in pork processing and proclaimed itself Porkopolis.
STOCK YARD CANNING ROOM
Meat packing software
Meat packing software
The meat industry has come to be dominated by a handful of huge corporations that slaughter and process most of the country’s meat at large centralized facilities. The volume and speed of production demanded at meatpacking and slaughterhouses often make for dangerous and unsanitary conditions that can lead to worker injury and contaminated product. The US Department of Agriculture oversees the industry, but a lack of funding and lax enforcement of existing regulations means that often the industry is left to regulate itself.
What Is Meatpacking?
Meatpacking refers to the process of turning livestock into meat, including slaughter, processing, packaging and distribution. These days, the top meatpacking companies do not just produce meat, they also control how the animals are raised long before slaughter: in the chicken industry, companies oversee the process from chick genetics through supermarket packaging; in the beef industry, cattle come under the control of the big meatpackers four to six months before slaughter.
The ownership of all parts of the supply chain is called vertical integration. It gives integrators – the companies who have integrated all the different parts under one umbrella – control over price and quality; and the economies of scale they have achieved have helped to drive down the consumer prices of meat. Vertical integration has also allowed the meat industry to become highly consolidated, controlled by just a few companies: As of 2015, the four largest companies in each sector controlled 85 percent of the beef packing industry, 66 percent of pork packing, and 51 percent of broiler chicken processing. 1 The slaughter and packing plants these few companies run operate on a tremendous scale: in 2015, 85 percent of beef cattle slaughtered took place in just 30 US slaughter facilities (of the almost 650), with more than half slaughtered in 13 plants. These top 13 plants process more than one million animals per year, which is approximately 2,800 cattle/day, 365 days/year. 2
The Complicated History of Meatpacking
The history of the meatpacking industry closely traces the history of corporate power and consolidation in the US. Upton Sinclair’s famous 1906 exposé, The Jungle, revealed the horrific conditions of Chicago’s meatpacking plants at the turn of the last century, laying blame on the consolidated power of the packing companies. The novel helped to catalyze changes in the industry, including the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act, which led to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration.
In the same period, antitrust laws aimed the stranglehold of big business in all sectors broke up most powerful players of the meat cartel. 3 Large-scale unionizing, along with the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, improved wages and working conditions at meatpacking plants; by the middle of the twentieth century, meatpacking jobs were considered skilled labor, and workers could expect to rise to the middle class. This period of opportunity didn’t last long, however, as companies began to move the packing facilities out of cities into rural areas, to be closer to the animal stock and to have more control over their workers. Transition to a production line, where workers performed the same task repeatedly, meant unskilled workers could be hired at lower wages. Consolidation began to rise again, such that today meatpacking is one of the most concentrated sectors of the economy; with consolidation, conditions at plants have worsened severely.
Meat packing software: LABOR AND WORKERS IN THE FOOD SYSTEM
Workers in Slaughterhouses
The meatpacking industry, as a 2015 report by Oxfam America on poultry workers put it, “churns out a lot of chicken, but it also churns through a lot of human beings.” Oxfam estimates that from every dollar spent on a McDonald’s Chicken McNugget, just two cents goes to compensate the processing labor. 4 Conditions are generally the worst at poultry plants, which tend to have the least union representation. Some beef and pork slaughter plants are still unionized, and, according to United Food and Commercial Workers, union meatpackers make 15 percent higher wages than non-union.
The costs of working in slaughterhouses are not offset by the low pay; and worse, many workers sacrifice their bodies on the production line. With line speeds twice as fast as forty years ago, the stress of repetitive cutting motions can lead to serious injury. A 2013 Southern Poverty Law Center report found that nearly 75 percent of poultry workers described having some type of significant work-related injury or illness. 5 6 The US General Accounting Office (GAO) found in 2016 that while injury rates for meat and poultry processing workers have declined in recent years, they are (at 5.7 percent) still higher than in manufacturing, overall. 7 According to the Department of Labor, the incidence of occupational illness reported in the poultry industry is more than six times the average for all US industries. 8
Injuries from the cutting equipment, from falls on slippery floors and from exposure to chemicals and pathogens are common. Musculoskeletal disorders — injuries to the nerves, tendons and muscles — are especially prevalent. For example, the incidence of carpal tunnel syndrome in poultry processing is seven times higher than the national average. On a chicken processing line, a worker can repeat the same motion as many as 20,000 times in a day, which can lead to permanent damage in the hands, arms, shoulders or back. In some slaughterhouses, workers are not allowed regular bathroom breaks, which can lead to severe health consequences, as well.