MEAT+POULTRY - March 2015 - 89

"We are a deboner and our meat should not
have bones in it, but we don't get them all out,"
he says, knowing 100 percent is unattainable
with deboning, but always the goal. To address
this, Miller and his team use a "bone-reduction
program," he helped develop years ago.
"We knew we couldn't eliminate bones, but
we could reduce them," he says. The program
includes a three-pronged approach, starting
with an online inspector who, during front-half
deboning, inspects the breast while it is still
attached to the frame, but after the wings were
cut off and after the breast is pulled down. If
inspectors see that a bone is missing from the
carcass that shouldn't be, it is assumed to be in
the breast and it is cut out immediately.
Any time a bone is discovered, it is used to
inform the shoulder cutters up in the front of the
line, giving them valuable and nearly immediate
feedback, which is the second essential part of
the program.
At the end of the line the program depends
on a QA official who samples product for defects,
and especially the presence of bones. Any bones
discovered there are collected for an entire
shift to calculate bones per 1,000 lbs. of product
processed, which is charted for operations
employees to see as a means of statistical
process control (SPC). SPC is the third part of
the program, which is still used today.

"The first,
most-significant
change made
to keep up with
demand was
the shift away
from deboning
birds that were
hanging upside
down."

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THE X-RAY FACTOR
Supplementing the bone-reduction program at
Wayne Farms is x-ray technology. It is only in
the last five to six years that x-ray technology
has evolved to the point that the poultry
industry could use it with confidence.
"Chicken bones are fairly immature and
not as calcified, and therefore not as easy to
detect," says Miller, adding that throughout
all of its plants, the company uses Marel's
Sensor-X systems. "They pretty much have a
corner on the market. There aren't a whole lot
of [companies] using much of anything else
other than the Marel Sensor-X."
But, he adds, "We don't want x-ray to be a
crutch" that people learn to rely on in place of
GMPs and proper deboning technique. X-ray
machines are not infallible, Miller says. "You
can overload an x-ray machine. The more you
put in, the more it's going to miss." Bones are
still the biggest factor in determining quality

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MEAT+POULTRY - March 2015

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