COAL VALLEY, Ill. — While lawmakers prepare to introduce legislation to
mandate greater E. coli inspections of ground beef and national media fuels the
debate on the need for greater testing and safety procedures, one regional
Illinois-based processor, Valley Meats, has taken a major pre-emptive move and
has instituted a series of state-of-the-art testing and treatment technologies
to eradicate harmful pathogens into their product stream.
Valley Meats, which owns and operates a successful 30,000-square-foot food
processing facility in Coal Valley, Illinois, has recently employed the
highly-effective Test-and Hold system for finished ground beef verification
sampling and the SANOVA disinfectant system to continuously spray the surfaces
of raw materials used to produce ground beef products.
Investments in technology, research and more sophisticated process controls,
according to Patrick Boyle, President and CEO for the American Meat Institute,
have resulted in the incidents of pathogens in beef products dropping 45 percent
over the past 10 years. Today E. coli incidence is less than one-half of one
percent of beef products.
But that’s still not good enough for Valley Meats President Jeff Jobe, who has
instituted a mandatory three-step process to ensure its ground beef products are
free of any harmful pathogens before being shipped to market.
“We test the product as it comes in the door, then we continuously line and
auger spray with SANOVA and we employ the test-and-hold procedures on
individual lots of ground beef,” he said.
Test-and-hold requires careful time and inventory management, according to Jobe,
involving multiple sample lots of ground beef that are segregated and detained
until negative results are obtained.
As one of a small percentage of beef processors in the U.S. to routinely employ
test-and-hold inventory management protocols, Valley Meats’ finished ground beef
sampling system is one of the industry’s most effective, delineating
responsibilities for personnel, documentation, equipment and materials. The
program clearly defines guidelines for raw material handling, sampling of
finished product, testing of two hour production lots and USDA/FSIS sampling.
James Sommer, Valley Meats’ head of production, said all product must be
traceable back to the production lot, and must be on hold status and not
released until all results for the production day are available and it has been
determined that product meets the stringent testing standards.
Corrective actions based on improper sample collection, presumptive positive
test results and safety zones are established to ensure that no implicated
product enters commerce.
If a pathogen is detected, the entire lot is either sold to a “cooker”, a firm
that cooks or sells prepared meat (E. Coli bacteria is destroyed when properly
cooked at minimum temperatures of at least 160F) or the lot is destroyed.
SANOVA, a disinfecting agent consisting of sodium chlorite and citric acid, is
used as a pre-treatment processing aid in the application of what is essentially
a disinfectant to all facets of irregularly-shaped raw materials, killing
disease-causing bacteria on contact.
This microbiospray provides the best assurance that ground beef produced by
Valley Meats will be free of harmful pathogens, such as Salmonella and E. coli
0157:H7, a sometimes-deadly bacteria believed to mostly live in the intestines
of cattle but has also been found in the intestines of chickens, deer, sheep,
goats and pigs. The spray does not affect the quality, taste or color of the
meat.
Valley Meats, which voluntarily recalled ground beef earlier this year due to a
possible E. coli contamination, is according to Jobe, “taking every measure,
including the recent application of new pathogen eradication methods such as the
SANOVA spray, to assure our customers that they are purchasing the safest
products available on the market.”
For more information on Valley Meats and its testing and processing safety
measures, please contact James Sommer at (309) 799-7341
About Valley Meats
Valley Meats and associated brand J & B Meats have for the past 35 years
provided high quality meat products to regional casual and quick service dining
venues in the central Midwest. The product line includes fresh and frozen steaks
and chops, fresh and frozen ground beef products, specialty flavored beef
patties, as well as prepared items such as breaded pork and beef selections,
beef strips and diced meats. Valley Meats, with annual revenues of $40 million,
employs 70.
Source:
Valley Meats