Industry: Automating the Sizzle

The American is distinctly carnivorous: he now eats 175 Ibs. of meat a year, 14 Ibs. more than five years ago Despite this rise in the consumer’s appetite, the profits of the meat-packing industry remained depressingly low for close to two decades. Last year, finally the packers made a dramatic breakthrough: profits rose to $166 million, 46 million more than in 1963. The 1964 federal tax cut was partly responsible, but the convention of the American Meat Institute in Manhattan last week displayed an even bigger reason: some new machines that can pack profits as well as meat.

Just Cordwood. An old story to most big U.S. industries, automation is still a source of pride and wonder to the packers who are using it to transform basic operation. The biggest change has come about in in the production and marketing of processed meats —-51;sausages, hams, frankfurters and lunch meats— which account for about a third of the total market. One machine, for example, can now grind out 30,000 hot dogs an hour, all of a uniform weight and length for better cost control. Another, guided by computer punch cards, can chop up huge chunks of meat., frozen or fresh, to supply 1,000 Ibs. of meat paste every four minutes. Still others turn out smoked ham and bacon in twelve to 24 hours (v. 56 hours in the ordinary process) by electronic controls, automatically pump salt cure into ham, package bacon at the speed of 60 units a minute and stuff sausages in a new high-protein edible casing.

So sophisticated have the production and marketing of processed meats become that most packers look to them tor their major profit growth. Processed meat, they say, can be produced more cheaply than the fresh variety and pack aged with a distinctive brand name to attract the eye of the housewife. “When we sell fresh meat,” explains A.M I Economist Allen Johnson, “we often say we are just selling cordwood.”

One upstart company that has successfully applied the new technology to this cordwood is four-year-old Iowa Beef Packers of Denison, Iowa Already highly automated, Iowa Beef in November will open a new plant in Dakota City, Neb., that will apply a complete assembly line to beef cattle The carcass will be put on a moving assembly line the minute the animal is slaughtered. In quick operations, the hide will be yanked off, the entrails and carcass dropped on separate conveyor belts and every part claimed by different workers along the line. Such imaginative techniques already in use have given Iowa the highest sales per employee ($250,000) of the 500 biggest corporations.

New Smells. Packing executives last week were urged to look even further by Dr. Augustus B. Kinzel, president of the National Academy of Engineering. Said Kinzel: “Get away from the idea that a steak is a steak is just a steak.’ He suggested that a laser beam instead of a knife be used to cut meat with tissue-thin precision and that special blades patterned after the cryogenic needles now used in brain surgery be used to cut and cauterize at the same time. He believes that superhot temperatures can be employed to create new meat textures. Chemicals could also introduce new colors and new smells, says Kinzel, and could be used to create what the industry believes meat eaters would really like: a louder, ear-appealing sizzle during cooking.