The meat packing and processing industry has been facing a serious labor shortage that's posing a significant challenge to many protein processing and meat packing facilities. With fewer workers available, a multitude and most likely a majority of food processors and meat packers are struggling to keep up with consumer demand.
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What should meat packers expect?
As the demand for meat continues to rise and labor storages remain strong in the meat industry, there is a lot of pressure on meat packers' operations as a whole and even more soon day-to-day facility efficiency, quality assurance, and process and training simplicity During any crisis, rare simplicity and ease of accessibility go a long, long way.
Check out this National Provisioner article to learn about meat industry labor shortages.
Automated hand and footwear hygiene systems will undoubtedly become a necessity for meat processing facilities. Automated and easy equipment is essential for food processing professionals to adapt and thrive in the face of labor shortages.
When implemented, our meat processing equipment for employee hygiene will:
- Increase facility efficiency overall
- Shorten hygiene process time and steps
- Simplify training for old and new employees
- Remove human error and variance
- Reduce the risk of recalls and cross-contamination
- Eliminate 99% of harmful pathogens
With an industry-wide labor shortage, facilities are at more risk as a whole
Priority #1 should always be ensuring consumers receive products that are safe to consume. Anything else is unacceptable.
History has proven that unstable environments will always increase risk overall. Harmful pathogen spread, cross-contamination, and food-borne illnesses have shown time and time again to cause serious issues and scary results. Recalls are always dangerous, sad, and serious situations for facilities and innocent consumers.
Previous recalls and the recoveries from them show how severe they can be and additionally severe they can become when coupled with another situation, especially heavy-impact, industry-wide issues. If a recall occurs during labor shortages, the blow will be even more difficult for facilities to recover from and sometimes detrimental enough to make recovery impossible.
One of the most frustrating things about meat, poultry, seafood, and chicken recalls is that they are 100% avoidable in almost all cases. That’s a tough pill to swallow from any side of the production process.
Consumers are genuinely affected by these recall-worthy facility problems and food safety issues. The recall-recovering facility usually stockpiles however much money they can across a variety of recovery efforts - think facility improvements, food safety and hygiene system reworks, customer settlements, positive brand recognition efforts, public apologies with action taken, etc etc etc. Despite the amount of facility changes done, food safety events hosted, and remorse shown consumers have ultimately shown they definitely remember and absolutely consider recalls during the buying process. In many cases, it is impossible for facilities to ever gain back that customer brand loyalty they lost due to improper food safety handling and costly, typically extremely avoidable, product recalls.
How can meat processors reduce risk?
It is crucial to utilize top-notch equipment throughout meat processing facilities and to have a proper employee facility hand and footwear hygiene process in place with new and old employee hygiene program training and retraining. Facilities will avoid recalls, reduce risk overall, maintain brand loyalty, and streamline operations.
When it comes to simplicity and consistency in your facility, we are your one-stop shop.
Meritech’s automated, easy-to-use hand and footwear equipment is made to help with all that and more. CleanTech® makes employee training and accountability easy. With the fast-paced nature of the food industry, maintaining and educating employees on proper hygiene protocols can be a challenge for many new employees. Using automated equipment with an on-screen timer and step-by-step instructions displayed with a looping video how-to video makes the easy-to-clean design easy to use, too.
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Protein processing and meat packing facilities can quickly adapt
To deal with meat industry labor shortages, it is crucial to utilize top-notch equipment throughout meat processing facilities and to have a proper employee facility hand and footwear hygiene process in place with new and old employee hygiene program training and retraining. Facilities will avoid recalls and reduce risk overall, maintain brand loyalty, and streamline operations as a whole.
Protein processing and meat packing facilities can quickly adapt to meat industry labor shortages and continue to meet consumer demand by implementing automated hygiene and partnering with the hygiene experts today.
