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Let's take a tour of the newest and most modern pork packing plant in America, Prestage Foods of Iowa, near Eagle Grove.
Grab a hard hat, white coat, and boots. Put your rings and other jewelry in your pocket. Wash your hands. Walk over a disinfectant pad. Let’s go. (If you are squeamish, skip over the kill floor photos.)
The plant opened in March and is killing about 5,400 hogs a day, which is on schedule, says Null. The bulk of the pigs harvested today, about 85%, are owned by Prestage Farms, but that percentage will drop to 60% when the plant is running at full speed.
Prestage Farms is based in Clinton, North Carolina, and owns 185,000 sows. It is the largest family-owned pork producer in the U.S. today.
“This is the most advanced pork facility in the entire world," says Null. "We built this plant with a producer mind-set. Producers always look at packers with a skeptical eye. It was clear that the capital we were investing in the live end of the pig business was not being rewarded proportionately to the packer end. You have to vertically integrate or you are not going to be around. Prestage did it once in turkeys, so we are doing it in pork.”
A small percent of the pork from the plant is being exported to Mexico and China, but that will increase, says Null. The goal is to export 30% of the product out of here.
The plant was designed so managers can get to the cut floor and the kill floor quickly and easily, says Null.
The plant is kept as dry as possible, for less bacteria, says Null. “People used to believe you had to wet everything down, but now we know you want to keep plants dry.”
“There are a lot of things on the cutting side of this business that matter, including the perfection of the splitting,” says Null. “I’ve never worked anywhere with better process control than this plant.”
The plant is not boning hams yet. That will be phase two. Today, most of the hams are going to Mexico or to other companies like Smithfield or Hormel to be processed.
Let’s head back to the beginning of the process.
The top managers at Prestage were all plucked from other packers such as Smithfield, Hormel, Tyson, and Seaboard-Triumph. “We took what worked well at all those companies and went one step further in automation,” says Hogle.
Misters keep pigs cool in the summer, and in-floor heat keeps them warm in the winter. Fresh air is pulled from the east side of the barn across to a filter on the west side. Those cool cells filter the air going out using water to capture the dust particles.
“The air we are exhausting has a low impact from an odor standpoint,” says Hogle. “Stand out there in between livestock and rendering on the other side of the building and you would think you were in the middle of the country, even though you have two of the most pungent odors from a livestock harvest standpoint.”
The barn holds 6,000 pigs. There are about 2,500 pigs in barn this morning and workers will continue unloading trucks until about 12:30 p.m. Pig deliveries start at 2:30 a.m., the coolest part of the day in the summer. “If we can get the pigs in our barn early where there are misters and air flow, that is a lot better from a handling standpoint,” says Hogle.
Every load of hogs to the plant is scheduled a minimum of a week in advance. The goal is to eliminate wait time for trucks of pigs. “Based on our design, we can bring in up to 1,700 pigs per hour without ever having a truck wait in line,” says Hogle.
In one pen, an employee in the quality control department is holding a cup on a long pole, waiting for a pig to urinate. The sample will be tested for ractopamine, a feed additive that is not allowed in pork going through this plant.
If a pig doesn’t fit the harvest requirements due to a belly bust, weight issue, or more, it is segregated and sent to another buyer. No pigs under 200 pounds or over 350 pounds are harvested at the plant. USDA inspectors monitor every pen for health status.
If you watch the robot and pay attention to the saw blade, you will see that between every single carcass it sanitizes the blade.
Automatic neck clippers do a job that used to be done by hand. Another laser light and set of cameras is measuring how long the carcass is and cutting at the right angle and height.
The head drops and hangs down by its jowl which exposes the lymph nodes in the head to the USDA head inspectors on the other side of the line. All parts of the carcass are 100% inspected.
A final cut removes the kidneys, which go to rendering. This is a high-risk area for fecal or ingested contamination. Any area of concern gets a purple mark. That is a signal to workers to trim that piece off prior to going to the final inspection by the USDA. It can be something as simple as one little fleck. Contamination rates are extremely low. We’ve watched 30 carcasses go by and haven’t seen a single mark.
If carcasses do have contamination from a broken bile sack, for example, they are railed off to the side, trimmed and then railed back on the line for final inspection.
Vacuums remove the spinal cord, which goes to rendering. Lard is trimmed and sent to rendering to be made into choice white grease. Other rendered pieces are cooked down, ground up, and made into meat and bone meal.
The carcasses are weighed and bone dust is removed.
This is the snap chill corridor. There are three different stages to the snap chill area, each at a different temperature. The first one is the coldest at -25˚F. Carcasses are in this section for 20 minutes. The next section is -5˚F. They are in there for 30 minutes. The third section is 4˚F. They are there for another 30 minutes. From there they go to the coolers.
The outside is flash frozen, explains Hogle. When the carcass reaches the cooler the outside is as hard as a rock, but the internal temperature of the ham is 70˚.
“The premise behind the snap chill is to cool that carcass as fast as possible,” he says. “In the conversion of muscle to meat, the faster you can chill it down, the higher the pH. The higher the pH, the more water-holding capacity of the meat. We typically run about a 6.0 on pH. Plants that don’t have a snap chill will typically be about a 5.6, a huge difference.”
These carcasses will chill in the cooler overnight and head to the cut floor in the morning.
