Meat packing is the wholesale business of harvesting animals and preparing their meat and by-products for sale and distribution to retailers. Meat packing commonly involves the preparation of cattle, hogs, and sheep, but it can also include the processing of buffalo, chickens, goats, turkeys, and other meat-producing animals. The term meat packing probably originated from the once common practice of packing heavily salted meat into wooden barrels for shipping and storage.
Meat packing is a large and important industry in many parts of the world. China produces more meat than any other country, followed by the United States, Brazil, and Germany. China also leads the world in pork production, followed by Germany and the United States. The United States produces the most beef and veal. Both France and Brazil produce significant amounts of veal as well. Argentina, Australia, Canada, India, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, and South Korea also produce large quantities of meat.
Exporting meat serves as an important part of the meat packing industry in many places. The amount of meat available for export depends on the demand for meat within the country. For example, though China leads the world in pork production, it exports little pork relative to other countries because large numbers of people living in China eat pork. Germany exports the most pork, followed by the United States and Canada. Brazil exports the most beef, followed by Australia and India. The United States and Brazil lead in the export of chicken and turkey.
People have raised domesticated meat animals for 10,000 to 12,000 years. However, meat packing did not become a prominent industry until the 1600’s and 1700’s. At that time, cities and other population centers began to grow significantly. As more people moved away from farms, large-scale operations had to be developed to process meat, preserve it, and ship it. At the time, salting served as the primary method of preserving meat. By the middle to late 1800’s, refrigeration systems that used ice became common. Mechanical refrigeration systems replaced ice boxes by the early 1900’s. Today, meat packers use a variety of methods to preserve meat, including canning, curing, freezing, packaging, refrigeration, and irradiation (exposure to radiation).
Marketing livestock and meat
Farmers and ranchers most often sell livestock directly to meat packers, a practice called direct marketing. The livestock owner sells the animals to a buyer, sometimes at a country buying station. To secure the best price, the owner must compare bids from different buyers and have knowledge of the meat market. Alternatively, a livestock producer may enter a contract with a buyer, agreeing in advance to deliver a number of animals for a fixed price.
A declining number of animals are sold through large trading centers called terminal markets. At a terminal market, livestock owners sell through a commission firm. The firm acts as an agent for the owner, negotiating with buyers to obtain the highest price. The firm receives a commission from the livestock owner for this service. Stockyards at terminal markets provide pens, weight scales, feed, and other necessities for handling and selling large numbers of livestock. In exchange, the stockyards typically receive a commission on sales.
Farmers and ranchers also sell livestock through smaller auction markets or sale barns. However, these markets have also declined in popularity.
Some livestock owners sell meat directly to consumers, restaurants, or retailers. These livestock owners generally pay a meat packer to process the meat.
Merchants throughout the world market meat from livestock using two different systems. In the more common system, called the cold chain market, meat packers harvest and process meat under carefully controlled temperatures. They chill the slaughtered animals quickly to prevent spoilage and keep the meat cold during cutting, packaging, and storage before sale. Under the wet market system, merchants sell fresh, nonrefrigerated meat and poultry from stalls in a market. Consumers select and purchase fresh meat daily. The meat sold in wet markets generally comes from small slaughterhouses located nearby. Merchants often harvest poultry on site.
Meat packers in most developed countries operate under the cold chain market system. Many Asian countries have traditionally relied on wet markets. But the cold chain market system has begun to play a role in Asian wet markets, some of which now also sell chilled meat cuts produced by large meat packing companies.
Pricing and grading meat
The meat industry determines the price and value of meat at three stages in the marketing chain. First, meat packers estimate the quality and expected meat yield from livestock when negotiating the price they will pay to livestock owners for their animals. Next, meat packers calculate a price to charge merchants for meat cuts and products. This price depends on the meat packer’s operating costs as well as the demand for specific products. Finally, merchants determine a price to charge consumers for the meat products. The consumer price reflects the product cost, the merchant’s operating expenses, and consumer demand for the products.
Meat prices depend on the balance of supply and demand throughout the marketing chain. For example, if the demand for meat decreases while supplies remain constant, prices must decline for all the meat to sell. As a perishable product, meat must move through the marketing chain and reach consumers before it spoils. Therefore, meat prices are more sensitive to changes in supply and demand than those of many other products.
Quality grading.
The demand for a cut of meat—and therefore its price—depends in part on its quality. Eating quality—the meat’s tenderness, juiciness, and flavor when cooked—has the greatest effect on price and value. Meat packers assign quality grades to animal carcasses (dead bodies) and to meat cuts based on established standards. The grades are meant to predict eating quality, helping consumers select meat for purchase.
Different countries use various quality grading systems. In the United States, for example, the top three quality grades for beef are Prime, Choice, and Select. Meat packers assign these grades based on the animal’s age or maturity, the amount and distribution of its finish (fat), and the firmness and fullness of its muscles. All these factors can affect the meat’s eating quality. Canada uses a more complex set of grades designated as A, AA, AAA, and Canada Prime. This system also considers fat color and meat color and texture when grading beef
The role of quality grades in determining prices has been the subject of some controversy in the meat industry. Animal age, fat distribution, and muscle content do not always accurately predict eating quality. Meat packers have also found that consumers rely more on brand names than generic grades in selecting certain meats.
Yield grading.
Meat packers also assign yield grades to meat based on the expected yield of lean meat from an animal or carcass. These grades depend on the weight of the animal or its carcass and the relative thickness of fat and muscle. Yield grades are used in determining prices for livestock, carcasses, and wholesale meat cuts. Consumers typically do not see yield grades.
Meat packing processes
Converting a live animal to meat products takes at least 20 to 25 distinct operations, depending on the species. Some meat packers follow special practices required to make the meat acceptable to members of a particular religion. For example, kosher slaughtering, based on Jewish dietary laws, does not allow for the stunning of animals. Halal slaughtering, practiced in the Islamic faith, requires the butcher to invoke the name of God and cut the animal’s throat quickly with a sharp knife.
Inspection and stunning.
An ante-mortem inspection, conducted just before slaughter, ensures that an animal is healthy, free of disease, and fit for human consumption. Government agencies normally conduct the inspections, and veterinarians usually perform them.
Most countries require that animals are stunned prior to slaughter to make them unconscious and insensitive to pain. Workers stun animals in various ways, including concussion, electric shock, and suffocation by gas. They most commonly stun cattle by concussion and pigs, lambs, and poultry by shock. Workers also frequently use carbon dioxide gas to stun pigs.
Slaughtering and dressing.
Once workers have stunned an animal, they must quickly exsanguinate (bleed) it. Exsanguination must occur before the animal regains consciousness and while its heart is still pumping. This loss of blood results in the animal’s death.
The carcass hangs from a moving rail during exsanguination and for the rest of dressing (preparation of the meat). Workers stationed along the rail wash the carcass and skin it or remove the hair. They remove the digestive and intestinal tract through a process called evisceration, cut the dressed carcass in half, and remove the spinal cord. Next, they perform a post-mortem (after death) inspection of the carcass. They wash it once again to reduce contamination by microbes and then chill it as quickly as possible in a refrigerated room at about 36 °F (2 °C). Then workers may cut the halves into forequarters and hindquarters.
After chilling, workers proceed with fabrication, dividing the carcass into wholesale or retail cuts and packaging them. Cuts for beef include flank, short loin, sirloin, round, and rump from the hindquarters, and brisket, chuck, foreshank, rib, and plate from the forequarters. Proper packaging reduces spoilage. Fabrication also results in meat trimmings, which meat packers use to manufacture sausage and other processed meat products.
Curing and smoking
were once used primarily to preserve meat. Today, meat packers preserve meat mainly by refrigeration. But curing and smoking remain popular because of the unique flavors they give to bacon, corned beef, frankfurters, ham, and other products.
Packers cure most meat by pumping a curing solution into its arteries or by injecting it directly into the meat. The curing solution consists largely of salt, sodium nitrite, and water but may also include sugar. Additional ingredients, such as sodium ascorbate and spices, often help develop the color of cured meat and preserve its flavor.
Smoking takes place in air-conditioned, stainless-steel rooms that draw in controlled amounts of smoke from special hardwood sawdust. The warm, fragrant smoke gives the meat a unique flavor and color.
Sausage making.
Meat packers make over 200 varieties of sausage, most of them using the same basic process. First, they chop or grind beef, pork, chicken, turkey, or another meat, alone or in various combinations. They mix the meat with seasonings and curing ingredients. Generally, machines force this mixture into long, often edible tubes called casings. The machines then tie or twist the casings at regular intervals to form sausage links. The sausage may be smoked, cooked, or dried, depending on the variety.
Sausage is popular with consumers worldwide because of its convenience and its variety of flavors, shapes, and sizes. Some ready-to-eat sausage varieties require no cooking. Flavor varieties include cheese, chili, honey, brown sugar, and jalapeño pepper.
By-products
Modern production methods enable meat packers to use much animal material that was once considered waste. By-products represent a significant part of an animal’s value, making up 5 to 30 percent its live weight.
Manufacturers divide by-products into two classes: (1) edible by-products or variety meats and (2) inedible by-products. Edible by-products include the blood, bone stock, heart, kidney, liver, spleen, tongue, tripe (first and second stomachs of beef), and gizzards of poultry. Inedible by-products include the bones, hair, fat, feathers, and hides. Manufacturers may use inedible by-products to make cosmetics, deodorants, detergents, glue, leather goods, oils, perfumes, plastic, and soap, among other items. In addition, meat packers recover a number of hormones and enzymes during harvesting for use in pharmaceuticals (medicinal drugs).
Trends and changes in meat packing
The meat-packing industry continuously updates and improves its methods of operation. For example, since the 1990’s, the industry has worked to improve the ability to trace animals and carcasses to their farm of origin. This effort began largely in response to an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also called mad cow disease, that peaked in the United Kingdom in the 1990’s (see Mad cow disease). The European Union now requires that meat packers have systems to trace beef and beef products. Other countries, including the United States, have begun to develop similar systems.
Meat packing has proven more resistant to automation than other industries. Individual animals vary in size and shape, making it difficult to process them using standardized machinery. Also, operations such as skinning and evisceration require special care to maintain good sanitation. But engineers have developed industrial robots to perform such jobs as packaging and stacking. Advances in video image analysis and computerization have also enabled the automation of some cutting, slicing, and fabrication processes.
