The word “recall’ in reference to meat or poultry products might lead to the presumption that the incident involved presence of a foodborne pathogen. In 2022, there were 42 recalls of U.S. Department of Agriculture-regulated products, nine of which involved contamination with foreign materials.  For the first three months of 2023, only one of the 11 recalls involved foreign material. 

Marco Azzaretti, director of marketing at Key Technology, discusses the company’s integrated hyperspectral sorting system for bacon bits, which can virtually eliminate the need for manual inspection.

1. What labor-saving opportunities does Key Technology’s new sorter for bacon bits offer processors?

To minimize labor, our VERYX BioPrint optical sorter for bacon bits enables a processor to reduce or eliminate operators manually inspecting the product stream to remove foreign material (FM) and product defects. Also, this sorting system is managed through an ergonomic HMI with highly-intuitive, easy-to-use software that allows a new worker without a technical background to become proficient in operating the system after less than 30 minutes of training. To further reduce labor, VERYX comes with food-safe design features that minimize the time required for cleaning and maintenance while preventing contamination.

2. How does Key Technology’s new sorter for bacon bits fit in with processors' overall food safety efforts?

Our integrated sorting system for bacon bits helps processors improve food safety by performing the critical task of automatically removing FM that can inadvertently contaminate the processing line, reducing the risk of FM being packaged with good product and finding its way to the end consumer. FM incidents can have potentially catastrophic consequences for the health of the consumer, as well as damaging market perception of the brand’s product quality and safety.

3. How does the sorter add to a production line's overall operational efficiency?

In addition to reducing labor requirements by automating the sorting process, VERYX BioPrint also increases the speed and accuracy of FM removal, compared to manual inspection practices. This improves production line efficiency by maximizing throughput, while simultaneously improving process yield.

4. What are some key quality assurance challenges that this type of detection technology can help address?

Our VERYX BioPrint sorter features unique inspection technology that can find even the-most-difficult-to-detect FM with similar color and shape as good product, which would be difficult for a human performing manual inspection to reliably identify. The sorter’s sensors detect differences in the structural and biological characteristics of various materials, enabling VERYX BioPrint to accurately and consistently distinguish good product flowing down the line from product with some defects and FM in the product stream, which must be removed.