The Meat Industry in the midst of COVID-19

This is a scary time. Our entire society is fighting an enemy we can't see and have never fought before. 

Everyone is worried and stressed.

There have been news reports this week about the virus spreading in meat packing plants and those plants shutting down or significantly slowing production.

What does that mean for our food supply?

First, we are not going to run out of food. Yes, a slow down in production may affect the variety of protein available in some parts of our country, but we are not going to run out. We may have to get more creative or open minded about what we cook and serve our families. We may have to try new things or not have our favorite cuts for a little while. 

But, this too shall pass. We will not run out of food.

Packing plants

Workers in packing plants work in very close quarters. They have to stand near each other. Social distancing is not possible. There are lots of shared spaces like break rooms, changing rooms, and work areas. It’s not surprising that the virus spread in the plants because people are so close to each other.

That doesn't mean that COVID-19 is being passed on to consumers. The USDA does not have any reports of people becoming infected with COVID-19 from food or food packaging. This virus mainly spreads from person to person and is a respiratory virus meaning that you become infected when it enters your nose, eyes, or mouth. Viruses do not grow in food and when foods are cooked, viruses are killed. Follow the four steps of food safety to keep your family safe from all illness; wash your hands, be sure to cook your food to safe temperatures, keep cooked foods away from uncooked foods, and be sure to chill your leftovers in a timely manner.

Companies are doing what they can to keep their doors open and keep their people safe. Many are taking temperatures of employees, testing employees for the disease, and when people are infected, they stay home from work.  There is lots of extra cleaning and sanitation. Workers are wearing masks (most already wear gloves and wash their hands frequently). Some companies are providing partitions to keep people apart from each other.

These plants are in the middle of the food chain, so shutting down can have devastating consequences up and down the food supply.

Farmers

This disease has been dreadful for farmers. Some dairy farmers are dumping milk and egg farmers breaking eggs. We’ve heard about potatoes and other produce going to waste because no one can come pick it. Farmers all over this country have millions of animals ready to go to harvest in our food supply. Packing plants not purchasing them is a devastating condition for those farmers. The supply chain for beef animals goes back over two years to when the cow was bred. Pork and poultry are not quite as long, but still several months.

Grocery stores

People are buying more food in grocery stores than we’ve ever seen. Those stores have to have employees there to keep the food on the shelves. Then there are the truck drivers and supply chain workers that are also still hard at work in this mess. Those folks are putting themselves at risk every day because they have to be interact with people. They wear masks and try to social distance, but it must be so stressful.

In the US, we have the safest, least expensive food supply in the world. But that takes millions of people working every day. I love to think about the scope of our industry. That industry that feeds 300 million people.

Please continue to ask me about the meat industry. Hit me up with questions about new cuts that you are trying or new ways of cooking. Let me know about your successes and failures. Send me concerns about food safety. I’m happy to answer any question you may have.

Lab grown meat is not Impossible

Meat alternatives have been in the news a lot lately. A certain Royal burger chain has recently launched a burger that was once considered Impossible, and I can’t open my inbox or walk through a crowd at a conference without hearing something about lab-grown meat. So, it’s about time that I write something about it.

First. Is it Impossible?

We are really talking about two completely different products here.

       1.      Plant based meats – Products made to taste and feel like meat, but made from plants.

       2.      Lab-grown meats – Meat grown in a petri dish from cells and media. Not from plants, but not really from animals either.

One is out in the market, the other is still in the development stages.

Plant based meats

Some plant-based meats I found at a grocery
store in Texas.

The science behind the Impossible burger is actually pretty cool. They looked at meat and asked themselves, “What makes meat so tasty?” They felt like the answer was heme, a source of iron found in muscle and blood. Heme can also be found in soy and some other plants. So they isolated the heme producing DNA out of the soy plants and inserted it into yeast. Now the yeast can grow the heme through fermentation. They combine that with soy and potato proteins, coconut and sunflower oils, salt and some other ingredients. From there, they make burgers or sausage or whatever they want. If you look at the nutrition information (calories, fat, etc…) of the Impossible burger, you’ll see that it’s pretty similar to a beef burger.

There is another plant-based meat product called Beyond Meat that uses peas, mung beans, fava beans, and brown rice as their protein sources. They also use coconut and sunflower oils as well as cocoa butter and canola oil. Coconut oil is more saturated than other oils and likely gives these products a mouthfeel that is more similar to meats. Beyond Meat prides itself on not using GMOs and instead using beet juice extract, apple extract, and other ‘natural flavors’ to produce the meaty flavor. From what I can tell, the nutrition information on this one is also similar to a beef patty.

Lab grown meats

Meat products made from cells grown in a lab are being developed by over 40 different start-up companies. The most popular and well-funded of those is probably Memphis Meats, out of Berkley, CA. Others include Blue Nalu, Future Meat Technology, Finless Foods, Wild Type, and Aleph Farms.

I’m sure all these companies have their own spin on the process, but in a very basic way, they are using cells isolated from animals, either satellite cells or embryonic stem cells to grow more cells in a lab rather than growing them in an animal.

The cells are grown in what’s called a Bio reactor. Rather than feed and water, the cells need media, which is a combination of salts, sugars, and amino acids. Just like feeds change as animals grow, the needs of the cells change as they grow and differentiate. The scientists control the growth of the cells with hormones and provide them with scaffolding, which is a structure for them to grow on.

This technology is quite expensive. The first cell-based hamburger that was prepared in 2013 cost approximately $278,000, but today that cost is down to about $100. A company called Eat Just, Inc. has chicken nuggets that only costs $50 a piece.

A few of these companies are moving from lab-scale up to pilot plants, but the most ambitious timeline has products available for consumers no earlier than 2022. Most are after 2025.

Certain cell-based products will be easier to develop than others. Comminuted products like ground beef, hot dogs and chicken nuggets will be quicker to develop than those that are trying to produce whole-muscle cuts like a steak, a chicken breast, or a pork chop. The correct texture of a marbled steak will take a little longer to develop than a ground beef burger.

Another hurdle for these products will be regulations. In the US, meat products are regulated by USDA and call-based and plant products are regulated by FDA. The two agencies have agreed to work together to develop food safety regulations and labeling standards for cell-based meats.

One big question is what will it be called? The USDA has standards of identity for labels like ground beef, ham, and chicken nuggets. Currently, it is not clear if beef grown in a lab outside of a cow meets those standards. (I don’t think so, but no one has asked me.) Regardless, cell-based meat or lab-grown meat doesn’t have a very good ring to it.

So, lab-grown meats are still a long way from our dinner plates. As a rancher, a meat scientist, and as a mom, I’m not really worried about feeding them to my family any time soon.

Every Steak has a Story

May is National Beef Month. I don’t know who decides these months or why, but I’m glad we have a whole month devoted to a protein that I love to eat and raise. I have been mulling on the idea for this post for a while and figured May would be a great time to put my thoughts on paper, or technically, computer screen.

I love to do farm tours. We take a group of ladies on our annual Moms on the Farm Tour here in Northwest Arkansas, but we also do tours with students and other groups. A few years ago, I had some friends from Dallas come to town and ask me for something fun to do with their kids and I said, “Want to go see a dairy?” And we did. We toured a local dairy and had a great time!

On these tours, everyone loves to hear the farm story; how long the farm has been in operation, how many generations of this family have operated the farm, what crops have been raised there over the years. We love to see those farm stories in the grocery store, too. Several food companies do a great job of sharing the stories of their farmers with their consumers. People love to go to the farmers market or see ‘locally grown’ on the food they buy. I think it’s great that so many consumers want to know about their food and the farmers that produce it.

But, here is what I think people are missing… every steak has a story.

There are about ¾ of a million beef farms and ranches in the US, and over 91% are family owned or individually operated. The average size of a cow herd is 40 cows.

That means that most of the beef bought in the US came from a farmer with a story, just like the one you would hear from our ranch. The calves from our ranch aren’t sold at the farmers market or to a special store with our name on it. They go from our place to a backgrounder (like the Peterson Farm Brothers) or a feedlot operation (like the Feedyard Foodie). I’ve written a post about the segments of the beef industry. Then they will be harvested in a commercial facility and processed into beef that may go to a fancy restaurant or a small grocery store.

Cows on snow on the plains, on green grass here in
Northwest Arkansas, or in the arid mountains in New Mexico.
They all raise beef.

When you buy a steak at the store or order one in a restaurant, it could have come from a farm in Florida or a ranch in Montana. We visited a farm in Hawaii where the cows ate Noni fruit and lived within view of the Pacific Ocean. That’s the great thing about beef. Cows can live in very diverse climates and under lots of different conditions, but they all produce beef.

If you are interested in hearing more stories about farmers who raise beef and others in the beef industry, check out these blogs:

Tales of a Kansas Farm Mom

Cows Kids and Grass

Faith, Family, and Beef

Bovidiva

Beef Runner

Myths about Super Chicken

Lately, I’ve been seeing some stories about how unnaturally large and overgrown chickens are. People see how much bigger chickens are today compared to 50 years ago, and they question what farmers and poultry companies are doing to get them that way. So, I thought I would write a post addressing some of the myths about Super Chicken.

MYTH: Chickens are given steroids and/or hormones to make them so big.

First, it has been against Federal Regulations to give chickens steroids or hormones since the 1950’s. You may remember that from my previous post about food labels. In addition to being unlawful, steroid hormones don’t work well through feed or water, so farmers would have to inject the birds to get the effects of the hormones. Most chicken farmers have 50,000 birds or more. It would take a long time to give that many shots.

Poultry scientists have studied bird nutrition for many years and learned the optimal diet for raising chickens quickly and efficiently. The diets are balanced with the exact about of carbs, protein, fats, vitamins and minerals the chickens need at their specific phase of growth. The birds have access to feed at all times, and all this attention paid to their dietary needs helps them grow fast.

MYTH: Chickens are loaded up on antibiotics to make them grow.

Most large poultry farmers raise their birds with minimal to no antibiotics in the feed and water. They have learned to control disease with sanitation and proactive feed ingredients like probiotics and essential oils. If a farmer needs give their birds antibiotics when they are sick or to help keep them from getting sick, they work with a veterinarian to determine the best medicine for their flock. Farmers predominantly use types of antibiotics that are not used in human medicine to treat sickness.

It is important to remember that, regardless of whether or not antibiotics were used in raising your chicken, there are no antibiotics in your chicken meat. All animals must go through a withdrawal time after they are given antibiotics, allowing their bodies time to metabolize the medicine and clear it from their system.

MYTH: Chickens are genetically engineered to be big and have large breasts. 

Chickens are not genetically modified or GMOs. Traditionally, farmers kept the biggest and the best hens (momma chickens) and mated them with the biggest and the best roosters (daddy chickens) and produced bigger and better chicks. Today in the poultry industry, those best-on-best mating decisions are made by scientists with pages of data about the birds. They can select new generations of chickens and emphasize any number of traits from growth and breast size to health and bone strength. Couple that with the fact that a farmer can produce a new generation of chicken in a much shorter time than a cow or a pig, and changes in the chicken industry have happened very quickly.

MYTH: Chickens are raised in cages to make them grow.

The inside of a chicken house.

Birds raised for chicken meat are kept in large open houses and allowed to roam freely. To protect the birds’ health, the houses are closed and protected from the outside environment, but the birds have lots of room to wander wherever they wish. They are kept warm in the winter and cool in the summer. There is food and water available all throughout the house. When you visit a chicken house, the birds are quiet and happy.

Do you have more questions about chicken myths?

There is more great info on the website, Chicken Check In. Or you can follow chicken farmers on social media.

I don’t have many chicken posts, but you can check out my post from the Moms at the Poultry Counter on white striping in chicken, or see my hormone or antibiotic posts. I also have one recipe post with chicken, Grannie Annie’s Pozole.

As always, please feel free to ask questions in the comments below. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll find someone who does.

Baked Veal Parmigiana

After spending three days learning all about the American Milk-fed Veal Industry,  I wanted to incorporate some veal into my family’s meals. First, I tried Veal Parmigiana, a classic Italian recipe that is actually very easy to prepare. We eat plenty of fried food in my house, so I decided to put a healthy spin on Veal Parmigiana and prepare a baked version.

I began by researching recipes for chicken and pork parmigiana, both baked and fried, but eventually decided to start with this veal recipe from Catelli Brothers. Their recipe fries the cutlets in oil, but I found that it worked well as a baked dish. I visited their processing plant on my tour, and Mr. Catelli sent me the veal cutlets that I used in the dish.

Season, flour, egg, and bread crumbs.
Its really too easy.

First, season the cutlets with a little salt and pepper, then coat them in flour and an egg wash. Mix Parmesan cheese with Italian-seasoned panko bread crumbs for the final coating. I like to use paper plates for the flour and bread crumbs because it’s just so easy to throw away the egg and raw meat soaked flour and bread crumbs when you are done and not worry about cross contamination. I sprinkled a little olive oil on both sides of the breaded cutlets.

I placed the cutlets on a baking rack in the oven, preheated to 425°F, and cooked them until they reached at least 150°F internally. If you don’t have a cooking rack, you can place them in a baking dish and turn them after about 4-5 minutes. Veal cutlets are typically sliced very thin, so they cook quickly. In my convection oven, they were done after about 8 minutes. A conventional oven will take a little longer.

Bake and top with sauce and cheese.

After they reach temperature, I topped the cutlets with a few spoonfuls of marinara sauce from a jar, a mixture of mozzarella and parmesan cheeses, and a little parsley. I baked them for a couple more minutes, until the cheese was melted, and served them over pasta with more marinara.

In addition to its ease of preparation, this is also a fairly inexpensive dish. Veal cutlets will cost about $10, but I purchased all the remaining ingredients for about $20. Most cooks will already have olive oil, flour, pasta, and the cheeses in their kitchen. It easily made 5 servings for $5-6 per serving. I practiced this dish at my office and served it to two students who had never tried veal. They were both very impressed.

This is an easy veal dish that would be a great way to introduce your family to a new protein.

Baked Veal Parmigiana

4-5 veal cutlets

1 c flour

2 eggs whisked with 1 tbsp water

1 ½ cup Italian seasoned Panko bread crumbs

Shredded parmesan cheese

Shredded mozzarella cheese

Spaghetti sauce

Olive oil

Salt, pepper, parsley

Season cutlets with salt and pepper. Coat cutlets in flour, dip in egg bath, and coat in mixture of bread crumbs and parmesan cheese. Place on baking rack and sprinkle both sides of cutlets with olive oil. Bake in oven at 425°F until cutlets reach 150°F. Top cutlets with marinara and blend of parmesan and mozzarella cheese and parsley. Bake until cheese is melted.

Serve with pasta and marinara sauce.

An abscess: Its not a Tumor!

I try not to react to every negative photo or post I see online about the meat industry. Frankly, I just don’t have the time. However, when friends or a followers of my blog ask about certain post over and over again, I think it’s time to address it. That happened to me this week.

This photo and claim from a ‘butcher’ has been circulating around social media. I added the words in yellow.

I know how disgusting this picture looks, and using the word CANCER makes it extra scary. However, as a meat scientist, I can assure you that it is not cancer. It is an abscess, a localized infection that the animal’s body was fighting.

Abscesses like this one would be very rare to find in a butcher shop. Our meat supply is one of the most inspected industries in the world. Not even hospitals and nursing homes are inspected like meat plants are. Employees of the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service inspect every single animal as it goes through the harvest process. In a big commercial plant, dozens of pairs of eyes will look at every carcass. When an abscess is spotted, it is removed immediately. If an animal has been sick, USDA inspectors will see the signs of illness in the animal’s lymph nodes and internal organs. Sick animals are condemned and not allowed to go into the food supply.

The meat is further processed and cut up on the fabrication floor. When an abscess is found there, the whole line must be stopped and sanitized. The abscess and the tissue around it is removed and discarded. At that point, the knives, the table, and anything that was in contact with the abscess would have to be thoroughly cleaned and sanitized.

So, there are several barriers that keep abscesses out of a retail butcher’s hands. I have worked in the meat department of a grocery store and have known several butchers throughout my career. I know they take their jobs very seriously and that they would treat an abscess just like it would be treated at the packing plant. If an abscess did make it to them, I’m sure they would cut out the abscess and the tissue around it and discard it. Then the equipment and area would be cleaned.

I take issue with posts like these for several reasons.

1.          They are scare-tactics meant to shock and gross-out people, causing a mistrust of our food system. Cancer is such a scary word. Most of our meat comes from young animals who would be very unlikely to have cancer. Furthermore, an animal with cancer would be very sick and would be condemned on the kill floor by the inspector.
2.       Pictures like these aren’t about safety or public health; they are about generating clicks and shares and fame for the originator. They are to twitter what auto accidents are to drivers: a sight that makes you slow down and look – and in the case of Facebook and Twitter, perhaps even share, giving the originator of the content attention and followers.
3.       If these butchers that shared this ‘information,’ were being truthful and were so concerned about these practices in their place of business, why didn’t they speak up? Why would you work somewhere for 30 years where you were disgusted by their policies? Why hasn’t he called his meat supplier and complained about these defects in the meat? 

This Thanksgiving, I’m thankful for the safety of the US meat supply, the 8,000 inspectors who oversee production and the hard-working people in our meat plants who bring the safest, most affordable meat supply to our tables. I hope this information helps you feel the same way.

As always, let me know if you have any questions.

Veal processing

To continue my series on the American Milk-fed veal industry, I’m going to write about my experience in the veal processing plants. In this series, I’ve already written an overview of the veal industry and about how the calves are fed and raised.

On our tour, hosted by the American Veal Association, we were invited to visit two veal processors in the Philadelphia area. We had breakfast with Wayne Marcho, who told us the story of Marcho Farms. He expanded his business from a few veal calves that he had in his boyhood into a company that employs over 200 people and contracts with veal farms in 5 states. He likes to say it’s a 4H project that ‘got out of hand.’

A photo of Mr. Catelli's father.
I love the history in the meat business.

Tony Catelli invited us to an amazing veal dinner that I’m going to talk more about in my last post in the veal series. His dad started the family veal and lamb business over 70 years ago and passed it to his sons in 1981, becoming Catelli Brothers. Now it is the US division of the family owned Fontelli Food Group, the largest producer of veal in North America with plants in New Jersey and Quebec.

As a meat scientist, I was excited to get to see a new type of processing plant, but what I saw didn’t surprise me in the least. Just like all the meat processing plants I’ve been in, these plants had the highest standards in animal welfare and were immaculately clean and sanitary. They are operated under USDA inspection with their required HACCP plans to ensure that they produce a safe and wholesome product.

We observed harvest at the Marcho Farms plant, and, as with most large processing facilities in the US, Dr. Temple Grandin helped to design and approved the holding pens and live animal handling equipment. The animals are showered with water when they unload off the truck and rested in pens. They are calmly moved to harvest only by employees specially trained in live animal handling. The animals were stunned to render them unconscious and proceed through the process using humane and sanitary procedures just as is done in meat processing plants of all species.

I didn’t have any doubt that the harvest process would be clean and humane because I know the meat industry, and I know the people in it are committed to doing the right thing. Now I can say that I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

A USDA inspection stamp on
a veal carcass at Marcho Farms

Although we were not able to see the harvest side of the Catelli Brothers operation, Mr. Catelli shared that their live animal handling areas are monitored by a third-party animal welfare auditing company. They use video to view their entire process 100% of the time they are in operation.

Marcho Farms uses a lactic acid wash on the carcasses at various stages in the slaughter process to help keep bacteria from attaching to the meat. USDA inspectors observe the live animals and the whole harvest process. They will also look over each carcass and their organs for signs of disease or contamination. The inspector will mark each carcass with an inspection stamp of edible ink.

The carcasses are washed with 180°F water and individually bagged in plastic to eliminate cross-contamination. After chilling 48 hours in a cooler they are graded and cut up. 

The calves weigh about 500 pounds and have carcasses that range from 250 to 300 pounds.

You can see the size of the
veal carcasses at Marcho Farms.
 This man is about 6-foot tall

Veal grading

Just like beef, veal has USDA grades assigned to the carcasses by a USDA grader. Veal carcasses may grade Prime, Choice, Good, Standard, or Utility. Grades are decided based on the conformation of the carcasses (ratio of muscle to bone and fat) and the color of the lean.  The grader evaluates each carcass and designates their grade with a stamp of purple, edible ink.

Marcho Farms also participates in a USDA Process Verified Program called Butcher’s Block Reserve. It has qualifications for Quality grade in addition to ribeye size and lean color. The USDA grader evaluates each carcass and certifies the ones that meet the specifications for the program. It’s kinda like Certified Angus Beef for veal.

At Marcho Farms, USDA graders stamp veal carcasses with Quality Grade or Butcher Block Reserve

stamps based on lean color, ribeye size, and conformation (muscling).

Fabrication

In the meat business, we use the term ‘fabrication’ to reference the trimming and cutting up of the carcasses, so it’s really the opposite of ‘fabrication’. But, that’s the tradition.

Employees wear white frock and aprons,
disposable sleeves and gloves when
handling and cutting the veal.

Just like in all meat processing facilities, the plant is washed top to bottom every day, and company employees and USDA check the plant for cleanliness before they get started. Anyone entering the plant is required to wear clean frocks, hairnets, and hard hats. We had to wash our hands every time we entered, even though we weren’t going to touch anything. Employees who work with the meat wear plastic gloves and sleeves that get changed several times each day.

All of the cutting and packaging rooms are kept at refrigerated temperatures. Several times throughout the process, the veal cuts were sprayed with a blend of lactic and citric acid to control bacterial growth. The veal cuts move through the plant on cleaned, sanitized conveyor belts and in containers we call ‘lugs.’ The veal cuts are packaged ready to set out in the store. Catelli Brothers was the first company to provide case-ready veal and lamb. Once the cuts are packaged and labeled, they are boxed and stored in refrigeration until they are shipped out. Even the shipping dock is temperature controlled and the company places a temperature recorder inside each truck to ensure the meat stays cold.  

Case-ready veal cuts at Catelli Brothers

Mr. Catelli said that most of their veal takes less than 7 days from harvest to retail. That includes the carcasses being imported from Canada! Freshness is very important in the veal industry. Both Marcho Farms and Catelli Brothers said that they are able to trace their veal from farm to fork.

Something I always enjoy hearing about is the plant employees. These two plants employ over 400 people. It’s not easy work. These folks have to work on their feet in cold temperatures wearing lots of protective equipment. But, they enjoy their jobs. Many employees of both of these companies have worked there for many years. Mr. Catelli introduced us to Phil, who has been cutting meat for 57 years.

As on the harvest side, nothing I saw in fabrication and packaging surprised me. The process was clean and efficient. I have no doubt that they are producing a safe and wholesome product. Please let me know if you have any questions.

I wanted to share a few more pictures from the plant.

Some meat loaf blend heading from the grinder to packaging
in the Catelli Brothers plant. It contains veal, beef, and pork.

The carcasses at Catelli Brothers are harvested
in both the US and Canada. So, the
Canadian food safety system inspects
 the carcasses that are imported.

Carcasses at Catelli Brothers are split into two sides like a beef
or pork carcass, whereas those from Marcho Farms are left intact
like a lamb carcass. Each company does what works best for them.

When the meat cutter removes all the meat from the ribs like this,
we say its ‘Frenched.’ These are Frenched veal racks waiting
for the meat cutter to cut them into Frenched veal rib chops.

Veal shanks for Osso Bucco.

Veal cutlets. They have been tenderized.