Audit shows problem with foreign objects in beef

RANCHESTER, Wyo. — Although U.S. beef producers have met the challenge of reducing injection site lesions in beef carcasses, one issue they have not fixed is eliminating foreign objects.

“In 2022, the beef quality audit reported that 100% of the non-fed plants found foreign objects in beef,” said Trey Patterson, CEO of Padlock Ranch in Wyoming.

“Half of the plants reported they had customer complaints, meaning that some of these foreign products made it to further processing,” said Patterson during a webinar hosted by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. “We’re talking about shotgun pellets and it was in fed cattle plants, as well.”

Researchers at West Texas A&M are looking at foreign material detection techniques in live animals.

“The biggest problem is metal shot; it is the No. 1 found foreign material,” said Trent Schwartz, assistant professor of animal science. “The animals are coming in live with buckshot and birdshot and the one we think is on the rise the most is darts.”

Most of these foreign objects, Schwartz said, come from production agriculture.

“Specifically, cattle gathering techniques,” he said. “Cattle get in rough country and the first thing they use is a shotgun to move cattle so we don’t feel like this is a hunting issue.”

A change in the industry has triggered the focus on foreign objects in beef.

“From a food safety standpoint, a measurement of 7 to 25 millimeters in length was used to describe anything that was food hazard,” said Pat Mies, vice president of food, safety and quality assurance at Tyson Foods.

“Anything less that that was not going to be a hazard and anything bigger than that you would notice and not consume,” he said.

Then a recall happened with Pilgrim’s Pride.

“It involved plastic foreign objects in chicken products that were sent to schools,” Mies said. “The Food Safety and Inspection Service came out with a ruling that said any foreign material regardless of the physical characteristics is an adulterant to that product and is not fit for human consumption.”

That means any size of an object is an adulterant, he said, and the product must be pulled out of the marketplace.

An additional survey was taken, focusing on birdshot at 67 grinding locations throughout the United States.

“They all had issues with birdshot,” Mies said. “This is not a Texas issue, South Dakota issue or New Mexico issue; it’s an entire U.S. issue.”

The survey reported an average of 112 times per year there was an issue with buckshot in the ground beef, Mies said.

“In the ‘90s we attacked abscesses and moved the needle location from the top butt down to the shoulder and also from intramuscular to subcutaneous to get rid of the abscesses that were showing up at retail,” he said. “We’ve done a great job of reducing abscesses, but we’ve done nothing to reduce birdshot in our ground beef.”

At the plants, there are metal detectors, defect eliminators and X-ray systems to eliminate foreign objects.

“We also have people watching and pulling product that may have foreign objects in it off the line,” Mies said. “We have all these things in our plants, yet we still have problems, so it’s not 100% fail safe.”

For a grinding system, it starts with a combo dumper that holds about 2,000 pounds of beef trimmings.

“We dump that onto a metal detector belt for a visual inspection and that goes through a coarse grind, through an X-ray system and into a blender,” Mies said.

“It goes into a blender that typically holds around 6,000 pounds of beef to get the right fat percentage and then through a final grinder and into a package.”

If one birdshot is found during the process, that’s 6,000 pounds of beef.

“You have to implicate the blend prior to that because you don’t know if that BB was hung up in the grinding operation somewhere from the previous blend,” Mies said.

“You’re probably going to go after at least 12,000 pounds of ground beef to make sure none of that leaves your establishment.”

The average carcass weight of steers and heifers today is 940 pounds and about 25% of that will go into ground beef or 235 pounds.

“If you have a BB event, that’s 12,000 pounds of beef, divided by 235 pounds per head, so you’re looking at 51 head equivalent every time we find birdshot in our product,” Mies said.

“That equates to about 5,712 head per year, per facility multiplied by 67 facilities,” he said. “That’s 382,704 head per year of ground beef trimmings that are now going to rendering and are no longer used for edible consumption.”

“That’s 90 million pounds of ground beef we throw away due to birdshot,” Mies said. “With ground beef at about $5 per pound, that’s a lot of money we’re pulling out of the system because people decided to use a shot gun to move stubborn cattle.”

“As a producer, it’s hard for me to hear that,” Patterson said.

“As I look at the results of the 2022 beef quality audit, one thing that came out of that is food safety in our industry is nonnegotiable — it’s now an expectation,” the cattleman said. “We have to make sure we’re putting safe food on the consumer table and we have to do that consistently.”

Sound handling and animal care practices will result in cattle not having foreign material in beef, Patterson said.

“We as an industry have to fix this,” he said. “If you can’t manage cattle without creating foreign objects in the beef, I believe you have no business being in our industry.”

Patterson encourages cattlemen to work together to eliminate the problem voluntarily.

“We have so many successes to be proud of in this industry,” he said. “I look forward to working with you in tackling this problem to get it fixed.”