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| Stephanie Sylvestre with meat saw |
Stephanie Sylvestre can cut a beef in half in 30 seconds. “These saws are awesome,” she says. “You can lift it up and down with your pinkie finger.”
Ms. Sylvestre is the project manager of Meat Processing in the School of Animal Science at Olds College, where she’s recently taken delivery of a multi-location, provincially-inspected abattoir, a pilot project that involved several stakeholders, including Alberta Agriculture and Food.
She’s eager to demonstrate the stainless steel supersaw, which operates within a compartment of a 53-foot, custom-built highway trailer.
“The idea is, the tractor-trailer unit would park on a flat area within a field,” she says. “This is a self-contained factory, where you can close up the back doors and just move the carcass along.
“When we pull into a yard, we don’t need a thing,” she adds. “We’re completely self-contained.”
After the animal is slaughtered and bled in the field, its carcass is hooked on and brought into the mobile abattoir.
From there, a beef – for example - would be laid on its back on the steel-framed skinning bed, which is housed in the first section of the unit. “Here, we’d take off the hide and remove the head and legs,” Sylvestre says. The animal is also eviscerated in this compartment, with the offal – or, waste – evacuated out a side door.
Next stop is the saw, where the carcass is cut in half. “After we split the carcass, it’s washed off with hoses,” she says. “The idea is, the carcass is progressively getting cleaner.”
Then, the carcass is hung in a refrigerated compartment within the trailer, which was built to hold up to 12 beef. And finally, the meat is transported to a cutting plant.
Sylvestre adds that testing will be done on different species, including pigs, goats, sheep, cattle and buffalo.
The unit is good news for livestock producers, who previously had to ship their animals to a slaughter plant.
Kim Moore is co-owner of Moore’s Feedlot, located near Olds, where they’re currently feeding 3,500 head of cattle. She thinks the mobile abattoir is “an awesome idea.”
We much prefer it, for our own personal beef,” she says. “The stress on the animal is significantly reduced. There’s less handling.”
She adds that when an emergency kill is required – for example, if an animal breaks its leg – it’s more humane to kill the animal where it lies, rather than have to transport it. “In this case, it would be exceptionally good,” Moore says.
Trials begin at Olds College this spring, and testing is expected to continue for several months.
Features of the Multi-location Abattoir:
On-board generator
Supersaw
Knife sterilizer
Scale
Heating and cooling unit in both backrooms
Three 500-gallon water storage tanks
Air compressor
Shower & toilet
Advantages of the Multi-location Abattoir:
Increasingly, consumers are looking for locally-produced, humanely-raised and slaughtered, grass-fed, organic or “natural” meats. A mobile abattoir translates into increased consumer access to high quality meat products in the local area and offers them the opportunity to put their ethical beliefs into practice.
An outstanding benefit of mobile abattoirs is that the animals are subjected to a minimum of stress, as compared with conventional, pre-slaughter handling that often includes stressful loading, transport, mixing and crowding.
Reduces handling costs for the producer.
Offers greater flexibility for specialty meat products.
Addresses the needs of livestock producers.
Alleviates the current shortage of abattoir facilities, especially in northern Alberta.
Capitalizes on niche markets, such as game meats, organically-grown products and Halal meats (Muslim dietary requirement).
For more information please contact:
Communications Coordinator,
Rick Overwater
(403) 507-7717,
roverwater@oldscollege.ca
Sumber Artikel : News: Olds College Media Release
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