CURRENT PUBLICATIONS
The current issue of PoultryTech is
online. The topic of this issue focuses on Safety Research.
ATRP's 2007 Annual
Report
PDF 18.0 Mb
ATRP's Program
Brochure
PDF 1.3 Mb
UPCOMING EVENTS
Fifth Annual Agriculture Week
Kick-Off Celebration
March 18, 2008 | 11:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Georgia Freight Depot, Atlanta, GA
National Safety Conference
for the Poultry Industry
June 4 - 6, 2008
Orlando, FL Poultry World
October 3 - 12, 2008
Georgia National Fairgrounds, Perry, GA
SPECIAL INTEREST
View the Food
Processing Technology Building brochure >>
Directions to the Food
Processing Technology Building >>
Agricultural technology program observes a 30-year climb to the top.
Georgia Tech's Research Horizons
ATRP IN THE NEWS
Manual RPM placement is not only risky for personnel, but it is also
expensive and time-consuming. A typical RPM placement operation includes
four vehicles and a six-person crew. All the vehicles must stop at
each marker location, so there is tremendous wear on the equipment
and increased fuel use.
The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) believed there was
a better way to do it and funded the Georgia Tech Research Institute
(GTRI) to develop a first-of-its-kind system capable of automatically
placing RPMs along the lane stripes while in motion.
Georgia Tech Research News
Determining the feasibility of using an optical waveguide sensor to
find the avian influenza on poultry farms before it spreads.
Georgia Tech Research News
Researchers are building a computer-vision system that identifies
plastic and other unwanted elements in finished food products.
Georgia Tech Research News
Two augmented reality systems improve communication between an automated
poultry inspection system and workers who trim birds on the processing
line.
Georgia Tech Research News
VIDEO FEATURES
Atlanta
Business Chronicle highlights Food Processing Technology Division. >>
Run Time: 3 min, 55 sec. - 6.6 Mb
Automated
Vision-Based Inspection and Control of Baking >>
Run Time: 2 min, 9 sec. - 8 Mb
Videos
require Apple's QuickTime plugin >>
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RESEARCH NEWS
SAFETY RESEARCH
Georgia Tech was recently awarded a Susan Harwood Grant by the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to develop a comprehensive
safety training program for third-shift sanitation and maintenance
workers in the poultry processing industry.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS), the rate at which injuries and illnesses occur among
poultry processing workers in the United States has reached its lowest
level ever and is below the rate found in food manufacturing in general
and not far below manufacturing as a whole.
Each year the U.S. poultry industry processes 20 billion pounds of
chicken. In one of the closing steps in first-processing, eviscerated
and defeathered carcasses are dropped into an immersion chiller, which
rapidly chills the carcasses to 40 °F or below. To further ensure
microbiological safety, processors also add chlorine to sanitize and
disinfect the chiller water. Because varying levels of chlorine can
affect product quality and taste as well as disinfection efficiency,
the chiller water must be constantly monitored.
By Gary Goettling
New technology is helping position an old injury-prevention research
tool developed for the poultry industry at the cutting edge of in situ
biomechanical monitoring.
Plastic liners and casings are used throughout the beef and poultry
industries to ensure ingredients remain fresh and that meat does not
come into contact with surfaces of cardboard or plastic containers
that may harbor pathogens. Sometimes, despite extensive precautions,
a part of a liner can tear off and become mixed in with a processed
food. Liner pieces are particularly difficult to detect because they
are often small, either transparent or nearly transparent, and coated
with food product or the ingredient that was initially packaged in
the container. Food processors have long sought a method to automatically
detect these materials in processed food.
By Al Yancy
As we move into the holiday season, one traditionally takes stock
of the year that was, and begins to look forward to the coming year
with wonder. It seems fitting then, to take a few moments to reflect
back on what 2007 meant for regulatory food safety, and to attempt
to predict where 2008 may take us.
In mid-November, the National Chicken Council (NCC) and National Turkey
Federation (NTF) signed a voluntary agreement with the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to improve safety in the workplace
through worker training, communication outreach, and information sharing.
Under terms of the agreement, companies in the chicken and turkey industries
will work together with OSHA to implement a new alliance on worker
safety, with particular emphasis on machinery hazards.
Next year, the Agricultural Technology Research Program (ATRP) turns
35. The program began in 1973 when a legislative conference committee
(responding to a request by the Georgia Poultry Federation) appropriated
$100,000 to be contracted to Georgia Tech through the Georgia Department
of Agriculture. A year later, the program was continued when the General
Assembly agreed to give the Georgia Department of Agriculture regular
line funding to continue the contract activity. In 1981, line funding
for the program was transferred to the Board of Regents for direct
allocation to Georgia Tech under the name “Agricultural Research
Program” (ARP). Eight years later, ARP officially became ATRP.
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH
Growing concerns over global warming coupled with increasing crude
oil prices have sparked national interest in alternative fuel sources.
Many think that a biofuels boom-and-bust scenario is under way because
so many start-ups have entered the market and oil prices are volatile.
But any breakthrough in one of three areas will dramatically enhance
the viability of biofuels. Those areas are identifying feedstock materials
that do not compete with food processing needs, improving conversion
efficiencies, and finding better ways to get more energy out per pound
while using less energy. Researchers at Georgia Tech are focusing on
improving conversion efficiencies.
As the nation continues its debate over the role of biofuels in helping
it achieve greater energy independence, more attention is being given
to economic and environmental considerations. Recent spikes in biofuel
production have brought increased demand on agricultural production
which, in turn, has driven up food costs. Many are now questioning
whether crop-based fuels can cost-effectively increase energy independence.
This past spring, Caroline McDougald and a group of classmates in
the Georgia Tech School of Industrial and Systems Engineering spent
a week in the Food Processing Technology Division’s Environmental
Lab testing whether or not biodiesel could be made using algae as the
feedstock. As part of an Energy Technology and Policy course requirement,
McDougald and the others had to complete a research project on alternative
energy sources.
Danny Carpenter was just engaging in one of his favorite past times,
reading the latest issue of Transworld Snowboarding magazine,
when he ran across an article about a professional snowboarder who
drove across the country in a truck fueled by vegetable oil. Amazed
that such a feat was possible, Danny and his dad Rick spent the next
year reading anything and everything they could lay their hands on
to do with biodiesel production.
Working with poultry processors, Georgia Tech researchers are seeking
to help establish a strategy for easily measuring the cleanliness of
impervious surfaces in containment areas to allow facilities to more
readily establish compliance with storm water runoff fecal contamination
limits.
Facilities sampling under the special conditions associated with impaired
streams section of the GAR000000 permit (Part III.C) must submit the
Annual Report no later than December 31, 2007 (and annually thereafter).
All other facilities must submit the Annual Report no later than October
31, 2008 (and on an annual basis thereafter). If you are unsure or
have any questions, contact John Pierson at (404) 407-8839 or john.pierson@gtri.gatech.edu or
Mike Giles at (770) 532-0473 or mike@gafp.org.
Georgia Tech researchers have successfully developed a novel separation
technology and built a pilot-scale separation facility to recover calcium
carbonate from eggshells for commercial use. The project, funded by
Georgia’s Traditional Industries Program for Food Processing,
is in the final year of a multi-year effort focused on developing an
alternative to landfills that extracts value-added byproducts from
eggshell waste. More than 37 million pounds of eggshells are landfilled
each year in the state.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued new regulations that
require companies to assess the risk of their facilities to terroristic
attack, and, if appropriate, take steps to mitigate that risk.
There was a time when anyone in the poultry business would label food
safety and animal welfare as the top two priorities for the industry.
However, these days it is hard to have that same conversation without
someone mentioning the impact that environmental controls will have
in the near future.
Berkil Alexander, a Physics teacher at Cobb County’s Pebblebrook
High School, recently completed a seven-week GIFT Fellowship with Georgia
Tech’s Food Processing Technology Division (FPTD). Georgia Intern-Fellowships
for Teachers or GIFT is designed to enhance mathematics and science
experiences of Georgia teachers and their students. GIFT teachers are
involved in cutting edge scientific research, data analysis, curriculum
development, and real-world inquiry and problem solving. The program
is administered through Georgia Tech’s Center for Education Integrating
Science, Mathematics and Computing (CEISMC).
AUTOMATION RESEARCH
With funding from Georgia’s Traditional Industries Program for
Food Processing, Georgia Tech researchers have embarked on an R&D
initiative to build a robot that can not only withstand high-pressure
washdown but also deliver the speeds and performance needed to meet
current processing throughput requirements.
In an effort to address the poultry industry’s challenge to
automate the deboning process, Georgia Tech researchers are developing
a “smart” deboning system. The system uses computer vision
and other sensing technologies to recognize and react to size and shape
differences of a chicken carcass in order to perform precision cuts
that optimize yield (the amount of meat removed from the bone) while
reducing the risk of bone fragments in finished product.
An initial GTRI study funded by Georgia’s Food Processing Advisory
Council (FoodPAC) focused on using IR technology to measure the mean
surface temperature and then estimate the core temperature of meat
products as they come out of industrial ovens. GTRI senior research
engineer John Stewart led that project, which included a field study
of GTRI’s IR computer vision system at a Gold Kist plant in Boaz,
Ala.
J. Craig Wyvill, chief of the Food Processing Technology Division
of the Georgia Tech Research Institute and an expert in poultry processing
and production trends, discusses emerging technology trends that will
help the poultry industry further reduce labor costs and increase processing
efficiency.
Over the past year, researchers with Georgia Tech’s Agricultural
Technology Research Program (ATRP) have made significant strides in
their quest to develop a non-robotic system for rehanging birds exiting
an immersion chiller onto a transfer shackle line. In so doing, they
are helping to automate a process that is limiting processing efficiencies
in many poultry processing plants.
Efficiency in the poultry business is paramount. If the production
process is not improved to operate efficiently, costs will rise and
ultimately, consumers will be asked to pay more at the supermarket – a
risk Mar-Jac is not willing to take. The electrode boiler is 99 percent
efficient and costs approximately $5,000 a year to maintain. Additionally,
its footprint is only 200 square feet, thus freeing up space in the
mill. |