Meat packing app delivers production & meat packing control, quality control, animal delivery, batch processing, weight accountability with no unaccounted yield loss for processing all animal and fresh meat products.
MODERN meat packing software solution works with INEXPENSIVE HARDWARE..
Complete meat packing and meat processing business management. The app manages meat deliveries, batch processing and meat packing, sales and distribution. Maintain high levels of traceability during the meat packing process.
[Meat Packing (Australian) edition of farmsoft - download brochure here]
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.
We will interview your team to custom design the meat packing & meat processing solution for your business.
Here's how your meat packing management project will work:
Interview with a solution consultant so we can understand how your meat packing business operates
We then prepare your meat packing forms and documents to be produced by the app and adjust special meat packing reporting tools you may need
A quick meeting to show you the settings in your app, and how to maintain them yourself in the future if you sell new meat products for example. We will have entered almost all of your settings for you.
Your consultant will then present you with proposed operational processes for your meat packing & processing processing business. This may happen a few times because we will respond to your feedback.
Your approved operational processes for your meat packing business will then be deployed one by one into your live business. We provide simple, written instructions you can show each team member so they don't need to remember anything or write anything down.
Review! Once you deploy the processes, we can have another review to see if there are any tweaks that would help improve your meat packing & handling processes.
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.
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.
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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.
Many workers in slaughterhouses are immigrants and have been threatened with deportation or firing if they speak up about unsafe working conditions, are injured on the job, seek medical treatment outside the company or complain about work-related health issues. 9
Food Safety
In 2015, USDA issued 150 recalls of contaminated meat products, covering 21.1 million pounds, including 5.1 million pounds for contamination by Listeria, Salmonella, and various forms of E. coli. 10 Meat and poultry were responsible for 2.1 million illnesses in the US in a ten-year period examined by Centers for Disease Control researchers — 22 percent of all foodborne illness. In 2014, Wolverine Packing Company recalled approximately 1.8 million pounds of ground beef products after 12 people were infected with an outbreak E. coli strains in four states. That same year, Tyson Foods recalled 33,840 pounds of mechanically separated chicken parts, some of which had infected nine people in a correctional facility in Tennessee with Salmonella. Baseline studies by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service found that 26.3 percent of raw chicken parts in the US tested positive for Salmonella and 21.4 percent for Campylobacter, two harmful bacteria. 11
Bacteria can enter the food supply if proper care is not taken in slaughter and processing. Fecal matter from animal intestines or animal hides can spread to tables, tools or to the meat itself. The high speeds of production lines in many processing plants, however, make it difficult for workers to take the necessary care to prevent contamination.
While rates of documented contamination are relatively low given the scale of total annual US meat production (48.5 billion pounds red meat and 40.5 billion pounds chilled and frozen chicken), even one instance of death caused by bacteria in the food supply is too many. Along with production line speeds, the centralization of slaughter and processing facilities is a major culprit in contamination outbreaks. Meat processed in one facility may end up in supermarkets or restaurants all over the country, making it difficult to trace the origin of the outbreak, and even harder to contain.
Federal Meatpacking Plant Regulations
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) regulates the safety of meat and poultry. Meat sold in the US carries a USDA “Inspected and Passed” seal proving that government inspectors have verified only the effectiveness of the processor’s food safety systems, through the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Program (HACCP), not, however, that they have inspected every piece of meat.
Meat processors and their livestock producer clients often ask about effective software solutions for inventory management and traceability tracking. There are many, many inventory management systems available, but the list gets much shorter for those that are suitable for very small and small meat processors. This article is intended to give an overview of the features to be considered and some specific software solutions for meat processors.
Must-Have Features
Must-have features in software solutions for all meat processors are basic inventory management and traceability tracking. Inventory management includes a set of business processes that include receiving, production, and sales, and traceability is the identification of individual, real-life items using a "lot number" or "batch number" that stays with each food item as it goes through the inventory management and manufacturing processes.
Basic inventory management and traceability for meat processors must include record keeping for:
Receiving of products. For meat processors, "products" will include animals, primal cuts, spices, and more.
Traceability for receiving: Every item received should have a lot number/batch number recorded. If a lot number has not been assigned by the supplier or original producer, then you must assign a lot number to the item.
Production. For meat processors, this can include disassembly of carcasses into cuts and ground, and the assembly of items using a "bill of materials" to produce things like sausage, cured meats, bacon, corned beef, and jerky.
Traceability for production: A lot number should be assigned to all final product and "work-in-progress" items produced/manufactured, as well as all ingredients which go into final product and "work-in-progress" item.
Sales of your all of final products should be recorded.
Traceability for sales: The identity of your customers and the lot number of every item sold to your customers should be recorded.
Recall. Utilizing the lot tracking used throughout the use of the system, recall features should easily create a report that traces the supplier, inventory in-stock, products manufactured, and customers for any ingredient or final product. Using recall features is important for actual recall events, as well as performing mock recalls and verification of traceability for third audits required by customers and certifications (e.g., organic certification).MPC
Additional Features To Consider
Catch-weight - A must-have feature for many meat processors. Catch weight is the actual weight of a food item, originating from the seafood industry, for example, as the name implies, the actual weight of an individual fish, crab, or bag of clams. For meat processors, examples of catch weight refer to the actual weight of an individual cut, carcass, sausage, or package.
Scale integration, barcode scanning, label making - Many meat processors would optimally like to have scale integration and label making built-into their software solution, so that the can seamlessly weight, label, and put items into inventory all at the same time. For some businesses, barcode scanning can provide labor savings and decrease human errors created by manual entry of codes.
Specific software solutions for meat processors
ACCTivate is an inventory system with lot tracking, partial catch-weight support, and barcoding scanning, but it does not have scale integration. ACCTivate can provide inventory tracking on a piece level and do the sale calculation by weight. Where it does not work is tracking both pieces and weight for inventory tracking and reporting. The catch weight is only on sales. You can manually add weights for each piece, but it is just not integrated with a digital scale.
ACCTivate is a Microsoft Windows, client/server software system that integrates with QuickBooks' desktop versions. You need to install it on your own computer, and you would want that to be a server computer on your LAN for a multi-user environment. Instead of maintaining your own server, you could have it hosted by a third party hosting service, for an additional fee.
DEAR Inventory is an easy to implement, cloud-based inventory management system best suited for uniform weight final products, for example, a 12 ounce packaged beef jerky. DEAR has good lot tracking and strong food safety recall features, barcode scanning, and label printing, and it will automatically generate recall customer letters. DEAR does not support catch-weights or scale integration.
DEAR integrates with many cloud-based systems including cloud-based accounting systems QuickBooks Online and XERO, eCommerce solutions Shopify, Amazon, Bigcommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, eBay, Neto, and Etsy, the shipping logistics system ShipStation (FedEx, UPS, USPS, DHL), and Point of Sale and Payment Processors including PayPal, Vend, Stripe, and Square. DEAR also includes integration with MS-Office Word for those wishing to customize reports and forms. [Full Disclosure: After helping food business implement DEAR Inventory for three years, Stan Ward Consulting and DEAR Inventory are formalizing a partnership to enable several hours of free consulting when Stan Ward Consulting is named as account manager.]
VistaTrac is an excellent choice for small and mid-sized meat processing businesses, offering an industrial system that is located right on the production floor. VistaTrac has all of the features needed by a meat processor, including barcode scanning, scale integration, label printing, lot tracking, and recall features.
VistaTrac is a Microsoft Windows, client/server software system that integrates with QuickBooks' desktop versions and Sage, as well as SAP, Oracle, and other accounting systems offering third party integration. VistaTrac has recently changed their technology set-up to use iPads as terminals, which has made the overall cost of their solution more affordable.
Other software solutions to consider:
Meat: Who Regulates What
Copied from Registrar Corp: FDA & USDA Who Regulates What?
Who regulates what fda-usda-info
"Deciphering whether meat and poultry products are regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) can be tricky. It’s not quite as simple as asking “is it meat or not?” Registrar Corp created this guide to help industry understand the difference in FDA and USDA jurisdiction.
Meat Packing Software
USDA is responsible for poultry. Under the Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA), poultry is defined as any domesticated bird. This includes domesticated chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, and guineas. USDA also inspects ratites and squab, including emus. These birds are exempt from FDA’s Food Drug and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) to the extent they are covered by the PPIA. Non-specified birds, such as wild turkeys, wild ducks, and wild geese, are under FDA jurisdiction.
Red Meats: Meat processors who are producing catch weight items can gain a true competitive advantage from Deacom’s AutoFinisher. With this automation tool, there is no longer a need to manually label individual products based on their unique weights as they come off the production line. Integrated with scales in your production line, the software confirms that the catch weight item adheres to the weight specifications maintained within the core ERP system. It then produces the appropriate label for the product with the catch weight, serial number, and a barcode so it can be later used within the warehouse management system.
USDA is responsible for regulating cattle, sheep, swine, goats, horses, mules, and other equine, along with their carcasses and parts. These meats are exempt from the FD&C Act to the extent they are covered by the Federal Meat Inspection Act. Non-specified red meats, such as bison, rabbits, game animals, zoo animals, and all members of the deer family including elk and moose, are under FDA jurisdiction.
Innova is a powerful and comprehensive software suite that collects and collates data, allowing meat processors to improve performance and enhance productivity.
From product delivery to final output, Innova streamlines processes, minimizes unplanned downtime, and will enable food processors to hit ambitious targets. Information can be displayed in reports and external systems to allow for comprehensive cost analysis and production planning. This allows processors to increase throughput, reduce giveaway, better use labor, and raw materials while managing full traceability of the final goods.
Production Managers get full control of the production process and easily transfers information into reports and external systems (such as ERP systems) for a total overview, costing and production planning. It improves all aspects of the production process, allowing managers to increase throughput in less time, reduce giveaway, better utilize labor and raw material, reduce risk and have full traceability of final goods.
Shell eggs of domestic chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, or guinea are under FDA jurisdiction. FDA regulates egg processing plants, such as plants that wash, sort, and pack eggs. Egg products, such as dried, frozen, or liquid eggs, are under USDA jurisdiction. USDA regulates egg product processing plants, such as plants that break and pasteurize eggs.
FDA is responsible for products not included in USDA’s Egg Products Inspection Regulations, as well as establishments not covered by USDA. Examples include restaurants, bakeries, and cake mix plants.
Products Containing Meat and Poultry
For products containing poultry, products with less than 2% cooked poultry meat and less than 10% cooked poultry skins, giblets, fat, and poultry meat (limited to less than 2%) in any combination are under FDA jurisdiction. Those with 2% or more cooked poultry and more than 10% cooked poultry skins, giblets, fat, and poultry meat in any combination are under USDA jurisdiction.
For products containing other meats, products with less than 3% raw meat, less than 2% cooked meat or other portions of the carcass, or less than 30% fat, tallow, or meat extract, alone or in combination, are under FDA jurisdiction. Those with more than 3% raw meat, 2% or more cooked meat or other portions of the carcass, or 30% or more fat, tallow ,or meat extract, alone or in combination, are under USDA jurisdiction."