One of our goals here at the Meat Cutters Club is to brain storm new ideas that can help us in our jobs, help us to navigate policies and laws that sometimes are too stringent and make our duties more complicated. Of course the "new ground beef and trim record keeping policy" is one of those challenges.
The new USDA regulations on record keeping for bulk-pre-ground products are pretty clear and very difficult to get around. My personal opinion is that none of this record keeping should be done at store level. It should be done at packer/processor level if not there, then at corporate level. Computer programs can be developed to consolidate all the necessary data.
In supermarkets today you can find several species of ground meat; chicken, turkey, pork, lamb, veal, and other exotic species such as buffalo, fish and game birds. Many of these species carry different types of bacteria or even pathogens at some point in their life cycle. It isn't illegal for any retail establishment to grind any of the aforementioned meats at store level. If we did would that mean the store would have to maintain grinding records for those species too?
Obviously most supermarkets by these exotic grinds already pre packaged which would make record keeping much simpler however, there is no mention in the law for record keeping for the pre-packaged ground beef products.
In summary the simplest way to save the cost of time and labor at store level is for decision-makers of companies to look at this from a common sense point of view. If I owned a chain of supermarkets I would buy my ground beef products from one supplier. Once I established this business principle then I would let my computer geeks do the rest, "not my meat cutters".
Beef is sold on a negotiate basis for the most part and meat buyers across the country are charged with trying to buy it for the lowest prices. That being said, maybe its time for the decision makers to look at both ends of the spectrum. If a supermarket company buys ground beef from several packers the record keeping is substantial for retail operations. The labor dollars used to keep those records should be taken into consideration relative to beef supply procurement.
If the ground beef is bought from one packer-source then the computer geeks can do the record keeping, not the meat cutters. The only record keeping to be done at store level is for fresh beef table trim and that would cut down on labor cost at the retail operations. We are a ground beef nation, as the demand goes up or when supermarkets promote ground beef in their ads, retail operations get penalized by expending more labor dollars than they should be.
I can get behind that. It does make sense to let packing company resume responsibility for their preground products. The meat cutter should only need to note that if they added it to their trim.
It is my understanding that this new rule is only for grinding done in store. I am guessing if a store is buying fine ground that is pre packaged they do not record that on the grinding log? I have heard many of the stores in my area are no longer grinding in store but instead buying pre ground and pre packaged from the packers. As far as bench trim I have been told they are throwing it out. There goes the margin.
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I'm not a vegetarian, but have eaten many animals that were.
Yes RJ, that seems to be the idea. Force stores to buy pre package ground bee similar to chicken, turkey and pork and buffalo. But as I said in my post, I think the packers should be responsible for the tracking of coarse ground beef that you grind at store level. As far as shop trim goes, there is another way to sell that other than ground beef but I won't mention it in public. If anyone would like to understand what they can do with shop trim other than throw it out or try to blend it with coarse ground beef just email me privately. I would be happy to share this with anyone.
I am not saying that selling 1,2, 3, or 5 pound chubs are a bad thing. Especially when you consider the labor cost that would be saved at store level. However, this means less meat cutting jobs for sure and higher cost to consumers.
I worked for a company that their primary customer was Walmart. We made case ready ground beef but Walmart put the pressure on the packer for different blends, different size packages so on and so forth. What happens is the consumer gets hurt. We constantly had to re-tool, increase our packaging cost, put in more QA people and so on. All this did was increase our costs so we passed it on to Walmart who ultimately passed it on to consumers.
There is no doubt the handwriting is on the wall. I think within the next 5 years or sooner (if we have outbreaks of ecoli) supermarkets around the globe will be using a pre packaged ground beef item in some form or another.
Thank goodness this law has been put on hold until like November if this year. Big brother wanting to rule ever thing we do and not really necessary, just cook the darn stuff .
Hi Alan, good to hear from you. I think restaurants fall under a different category because your not selling raw meat. However, what is important in restaurants is internal temperature of cooked ground beef and of course proper sanitation. If I owned and operated a restaurant I would have a disclaimer on my menus that would read; all ground beef products have been cooked to 160 degree internal temperatures.
I know there are restaurants that will cook you a medium rare or even rare hamburger, they are simply rolling the dice. Possibly, if patrons want undercooked ground beef hamburgers they must know that it is at there own risk.
Now if a restaurant wants to get a leg-up on competition and offer undercooked ground beef and grind their own beef, then I would only purchase muscle meat from my wholesaler. Muscle meat like chuck rolls, chuck mock tenders, center cut chuck clod cuts any muscle affordable that has been seamed out of the primal cut. Never anything with exterior or top-layer trim and never coarse ground beef. Even if the packer labels it as ground chuck, ground round or ground sirloin. All these products contain exterior top-layer trim.
Here is my thought. Make ALL packers use a standard packing label. Containing a bar code that has all the needed information. That way we could use different suppliers and have a program that can scan the bar code and keep records. Even to go as far as using the same on primal cuts to cover the "new" rule.
I agree with you Frog, I believe if they wanted to they can do that. But, the packers want to brand their names and the only way they can do that is make case ready grinds. Don't be surprised if you see Tyson doing that soon.
When Tyson first started making chicken nuggets for McDonalds, and chicken tenders for Burger King nobody knew they existed but millions of people where eating their products not knowing who Tyson was. They were McDonalds nuggets and Burger King tenders. Then the light bulbs came on for Tyson and marketing guru's gave Mr. Tyson another market that would double the size of the company. Brand your own name! This will eventually happen with ground beef.
That makes good sense to me. Even by the time that I got out (1996) the record keeping demands were so onerous that they definitely and negatively impacted sales. At that times these requirements were coming from the company, not the government. We had very strict requirements of logging and fat testing every single grind as well as how long it could remain in the case (4 hours) before being reduced and how long before it must be thrown out (end of day). And of course there were the sanitation requirements of breaking down, cleaning and sanitizing the grinder and blender after every grind as well as doing the same for bandsaws and cutting tables when changing species as well as at the end of each shift. We were 24/7 at the time. I supported these policies as the right thing to do for the sake of food safety but the problem was always that the company would not provide sufficient labor to execute them without negatively impacting sales. Even though we were union, cutters and occasionally meat managers would get terminated when caught violating these policies. For me the message became clear. do our best to provide 100% presentation in the case but never at the expense of violating policy and this is what I communicated to our crew. They or I could get fired for violating company policy but none of us could lose our jobs for an empty case.
Coalcracker wrote:
One of our goals here at the Meat Cutters Club is to brain storm new ideas that can help us in our jobs, help us to navigate policies and laws that sometimes are too stringent and make our duties more complicated. Of course the "new ground beef and trim record keeping policy" is one of those challenges.
The new USDA regulations on record keeping for bulk-pre-ground products are pretty clear and very difficult to get around. My personal opinion is that none of this record keeping should be done at store level. It should be done at packer/processor level if not there, then at corporate level. Computer programs can be developed to consolidate all the necessary data.
In supermarkets today you can find several species of ground meat; chicken, turkey, pork, lamb, veal, and other exotic species such as buffalo, fish and game birds. Many of these species carry different types of bacteria or even pathogens at some point in their life cycle. It isn't illegal for any retail establishment to grind any of the aforementioned meats at store level. If we did would that mean the store would have to maintain grinding records for those species too?
Obviously most supermarkets by these exotic grinds already pre packaged which would make record keeping much simpler however, there is no mention in the law for record keeping for the pre-packaged ground beef products.
In summary the simplest way to save the cost of time and labor at store level is for decision-makers of companies to look at this from a common sense point of view. If I owned a chain of supermarkets I would buy my ground beef products from one supplier. Once I established this business principle then I would let my computer geeks do the rest, "not my meat cutters".
Beef is sold on a negotiate basis for the most part and meat buyers across the country are charged with trying to buy it for the lowest prices. That being said, maybe its time for the decision makers to look at both ends of the spectrum. If a supermarket company buys ground beef from several packers the record keeping is substantial for retail operations. The labor dollars used to keep those records should be taken into consideration relative to beef supply procurement.
If the ground beef is bought from one packer-source then the computer geeks can do the record keeping, not the meat cutters. The only record keeping to be done at store level is for fresh beef table trim and that would cut down on labor cost at the retail operations. We are a ground beef nation, as the demand goes up or when supermarkets promote ground beef in their ads, retail operations get penalized by expending more labor dollars than they should be.
Jim, you summed it up succinctly. What you have stated is even more important today than back in 96. The reason is obvious; more and more policies, restrictions, rules and laws. But Jim who is going to be "advocates" in today's retail operations? Who has what it takes to deliver this message you stated back to management? Meat department business back as far as ancient times evolved from the cutting room level upwards to the so called "ivory towers". There first had to be blood on the floor before management was ever created.
Unless your message is driven hard and consistent by meat cutters across the land to upper management then nothing will change like it hasn't so far.
If things have not changed in the right direction in the 20 years since I left the trade, I hold out little hope that it ever will.
Regards,
Jim
Coalcracker wrote:
Jim, you summed it up succinctly. What you have stated is even more important today than back in 96. The reason is obvious; more and more policies, restrictions, rules and laws. But Jim who is going to be "advocates" in today's retail operations? Who has what it takes to deliver this message you stated back to management? Meat department business back as far as ancient times evolved from the cutting room level upwards to the so called "ivory towers". There first had to be blood on the floor before management was ever created.
Unless your message is driven hard and consistent by meat cutters across the land to upper management then nothing will change like it hasn't so far.
