Slaughter Farming Case Study

Overview of Slaughtering and Beef Processing

There are many processes that are conducted to bring an animal from field to table, but for ease of understanding, only those processes that will be conducted by the proposed Quality Beef plant will be addressed in this study. The average live steer weighs approximately 1000 pounds and yields about 450 pounds of post-processing beef. However, since not all cattle to be slaughtered are steers, it should be noted that the live weight can range from 550 to 1300 pounds, depending on the age and breed of the cattle used. The basic slaughtering process has become much more efficient and streamlined over the past several years, and the average abattoir can process approximately 350 head per hour, which would equate to 2800 head per day, assuming an eight-hour processing shift. At the proposed site, 320 head per

The daily schedule for meat processors consists of one or two eight-hour production and processing shifts followed by a six- to eight-hour cleanup shift. During this process, the equipment, walls, floors and work surfaces are cleaned, scrubbed and sanitized, and then re-rinsed. Commonly-used cleaning schedules involve the following processes:

 Equipment and floors are roughly hosed down or manually scraped to remove solid wastes and other easily removed materials. This process can be done with or without water, which differentiates between wet and dry cleaning. Dry cleaning is preferred by a wide margin, as the wet process unnecessarily introduces large volumes of high-strength wastes into the treatment systems.

 Following the initial cleanup, detergents and foam are applied to scrub the wastes from the surfaces, as well as to essentially disinfect the work