COLLEGE STATION September is National Food Safety Education Month this year, and food safety, naturally enough, begins at the beginning. All the kitchen cleanliness in the world won’t protect consumers from food-borne illnesses if producers are careless at the beginning of the food production line.
At Texas A&M University’s Rosenthal Meat Science and Technology Center, animal science students aren’t the only ones who learn these lessons. Throughout the year, hundreds of producers and other professionals from salesmen to chefs, bankers to feedlot operators, cattle brokers to grocery store executives attend meat processing courses at the center. There, attendees are taught the safest methods of processing meat products from hoof to table.
“Safety starts right here, with harvest and processing,” said Dr. Davey Griffin, Texas Cooperative Extension meat specialist.
To keep meat processing to optimum safety, the center uses Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures and Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point plans, which include cleanliness steps all through the process.
Among other safety steps, “Hot water is used for sanitation throughout” processing, said Misty Pfeiffer, Texas Agricultural Experiment Station communications specialist for animal science. Plus, she added, Critical Control Points, where workers conduct safety procedures, are conducted on each carcass. Each step requires a specific safety process to help insure the final product will not bring food-borne illnesses into anyone’s kitchen. Based on food safety research at Texas A&M, one of these steps requires a 2 percent organic acid spray (similar to vinegar) be used to help eliminate bacteria on the surface of the meat.
Workers are required to adhere to strict hygienic practices and to wear special coverings over their hands, clothes and shoes, as well as coverings over their hair; some wear hard hats.
HACCP, a control system of keeping meat processing sanitary and safe, has its roots in a different technology, Pfeiffer said. “The Pillsbury Co. developed HACCP in response to food safety requirements set by NASA for foods produced for manned space flights beginning in 1959.”
Learning the steps of processing from slaughter all the way to slicing and wrapping meat for the table is important for producers and other professionals, Griffin said, because among other things, “knowledge is power.” Those attending these classes “have the opportunity to go through the whole process and … observe what happens. They see it from start to finish; it’s a different way of marketing, and they start to see the difference.”
With the kind of hands-on learning these courses offer, attendees gain “real valuable perspective,” he added.
Even though Texas is famous for beef, it isn’t the only meat produced in the state. The Rosenthal center also includes meat-processing courses on pork and lamb, and offers other courses as well, including one on sausage-making.
In fact, the meat products that come out of Texas might surprise the average consumer. “Texas is one of the biggest producers of pepperoni for the pizza industry,” Griffin said. “There’s a couple of big plants up in the Dallas area.”
For more information on meat science courses (both academic and professional) at Texas A&M, visit http://meat.tamu.edu/. For more information on Rosenthal Center, click on the link marked Rosenthal.
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