Food researchers at the University of Alberta have found that cooking beef at 160°F — the level of heat treatment recommended by Health Canada and the USDA — does not always eliminate E. coli strains. They're also reporting that salt increases the heat resistance and that some strains survive pressure up to 87,000 pounds per square inch — the long-held standard used in high pressure processing.

Canadian research on heat-resistant ground beef

Donna Moenning, senior program director for the Center for Food Integrity, talks about why local companies are perceived differently from large processors.

Donna Moenning, CFI, on marketing locally sourced meats

For years, the industry has relied on dozens of communication protocols (such as Profibus, EtherNet/IP and BacNet). Standardized language PackML, developed by the Organization for Machine Automation and Control (OMAC), is quickly becoming the default solution among manufacturers. An organizational methodology for programming, it provides a standard framework for automating and integrating manufacturing equipment.

Unlike third-party real-time monitoring services, PackML facilitates machine-to-machine communication at the control layer, so the equipment can act on the information that it’s getting instead of just notifying the operator. Third-party vendors report all the monitoring data, allowing the operator a fuller picture of the production process.

PackML Analogy

PackML started as and end user-driven organization: End users told machine builders ‘this is what we need you to do so this machine and that machine can talk together.’

“Processors have to request that OEMs get on board.”

PackML & Processors

Excerpt: "They’d tell farmers they worked with, 'you’re somebody who makes an organic breakfast sausage; be unique. Don’t be a commodity. You might sell it to a smaller group of consumers, but you’ll sell it to demanding group of consumers who want that transparency.'"

SeanBuchanan-LocalMeat

Sean Buchanan of Black River Produce on how he came to partner with Arion Thiboumery of Vermont Packinghouse and the Lorentz brothers of Lorentz Meats.

SeanBuchanan-Partnership

Excerpt: “In Minnesota we opened a facility that we were a little bit ahead of relative to demand, we thought we were in the meat business and we found out we’re really in the custom meat business; we’re in the niche meat business."

MikeLorentz-BusinessModel

Excerpt: “We knew when we built the new building we were going to work with local farmers to sell their products directly to the consumer. We knew that farmers in general are skeptical of meat processors, so we wanted to provide transparency without having to get people dressed to trek through blood on the floor so we put in those windows that you could what we were doing. We told our farmers and producers that we had nothing to hide.”

MikeLorentz-GlassWalls

Excerpt: “Vermont is not an affluent per capita state but people spend a lot of money on food here. We have all kinds of specialty cheese, meat local organic vegetables. They pay more for it and that’s their decision. We believe that these production practices have real meaning in terms of the sustainability of agriculture. Finding ways for diversified smaller farmers to stay in business is the real deal.”

ArionThiboumery-MktNiche

Excerpt: “People want to know more about their food and where it comes from and how it’s handled. We feel that’s a good thing, we’re proud of what we do and we have nothing to hide. There’s blood and guts. We don’t just pet ‘em to death.”

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