Tremendous progress has been made in providing consumers with food that is consistently safe. Credit for this success is shared among industry, innovators, researchers, public-health surveillance and regulators (yes, regulators most certainly deserve a piece of the credit).
Packers and processors put safety and integrity of the product first. As such, that is the top priority of major slicing operations, and companies have many other key attributes to a well-sliced protein.
Two reasons supermarket delis were successful last year were because they were able to keep price increases manageable and they were able to innovate, says Jonna Parker, account services director at the Perishables Group, Chicago. For example, more retailers began offering bundling and combo options to create convenience.
Since environmental exposure is a major source of Listeria monocytogenes contamination on fully cooked ready-to-eat products, cook-in-the-bag processing has become very important. By not exposing the product to the environment between cooking and packaging, the chance of Lm contamination is eliminated, which reduces the need for some of the antimicrobial agents and the post-packaging pasteurization process to eliminate Lm on ready-to-eat meat products.
Spare parts are the lifeblood of operational reliability and plant capacity. No plant can operate at a high level of output without a reliable supply of functional spare parts. Spare parts form the bedrock on which operational reliability is built.