Effects of Meat Factory Cell on pork qualities, sensory characteristics and carcass hygiene: an exploratory study

ABSTRACT

The Meat Factory Cell (MFC) concept restructures the slaughter line into cell stations and merges elements of the slaughter- and primal cutting processes. With the MFC approach, most of the primals are removed prior to evisceration. This study describes the effect of the MFC concept on carcass hygiene, carcass yield, meat quality traits, and sensory characteristics of selected MFC products from trials with the very first pig carcasses processed with the MFC approach. Results show that hygiene of MFC carcasses rivals conventionally slaughtered carcasses. For quality variables and sensory characteristics of selected MFC products, the study shows that the MFC approach will result in products that equal, and in some cases surpass, conventional products, provided that proper processing, packaging and chilling is applied.

KEYWORDS:

• Meat Factory Cell
• meat quality
• carcass hygiene
• sensory characteristics
• hot-boning
• pork

Acknowledgements

Meat 2.0 was co-funded by Nortura SA. MeaTable was co-funded by Nortura SA, RobotNorge AS, Tronrud Engineering AS and Animalia AS. We also thank Tronrud Engineering AS for making the Carcass Holding Unit used in the study and Nortura for allowing access to their facilities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Research Council of Norway (RCN), as part of the ‘Meat2.0 – New Concept: The Foundation for Research Levy on Agricultural Products (FFL-JA), via the Research Council of Norway, is acknowledged for the support to ‘MeaTable – Robotised cells to obtain efficient meat production for the Norwegian meat industry’ [grant ID 281234]. Finally, we acknowledge the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Framework Programme [grant agreement number 871631] (RoBUTCHER).