"meat packing" news and stories

Last week, eight workers at a ConAgra pork processing facility in Lincoln, Nebraska, won $365 million in a Powerball drawing. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) recently contacted the eight winners and asked them to donate a small share of their winnings to improving the lives of pigs that have been rescued from slaughterhouses or 4-H fairs. PETA argues that pigs are what formed the livelihood of the workers and that the animals should be re-payed somehow.

[Via Pork Magazine, which has a slightly different slant]

Russian scientists have developed a device that essentially smells meat to determine how old it is and whether it's been stored properly. A sniff check is nothing new to any cook who's ever tried to decide if that week-old t-bone was still a candidate for dinner, but this new Russian sensor uses a series of highly sensitive electrodes to measure the gases that raw meat emits as it ages. Molecules evaporating from the surface of the meat are caught by coatings on sensors and the changed weight of the sensors is converted to a graphic depiction that looks something like a flower. Different types of aging and decay make different patterns and researchers say that the pattern for fresh meat is vastly different than that of a cut that's a few days old. They hope their device can be of use to meat packers and other safety controllers trying to identify unsafe foods.

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