New hope from slaughterhouse method
Since 2000, third-generation meatpacker Frank Grindinger has been
using the ``rinse-and-chill'' method in slaughtering bison and cattle.
By SCOTT CANON
The Kansas City Star
"Everybody loved it. Really clean taste. Very tender..."
Rod Anderson, president and owner of Pierpont's at Union Station and the Hereford House restaurants
SCOTT CANON/The Kansas City Star
Since 2000, third-generation meatpacker Frank Grindinger has been using the ``rinse-and-chill'' method in slaughtering bison and cattle.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. - They get more meat off a steer here. The chops are more tender, with chuck eating like strip.
Experience suggests the way G&C Packing Co. slaughters animals yields meat that stays fresh longer.
Finally, research declares it a safer hamburger.
For reasons not yet fully understood, technology that third-generation meat packer Frank Grindinger uses appears to fight rather than foster deadly bacteria.
Yet Grindinger is not sure how much longer he will keep at the rinse-and-chill technique that quickly flushes out an animal's blood moments after the kill.
"People like hot dogs," he says "but they don't want to hear how they're made."
He suspects it is not appetizing to consumers to learn how within minutes after an animal is killed at his plant a nozzle pumps chilled water - sterilized and mixed into a kind of pickling solution - into the animal's vascular system.
Still, the Minnesota company that patented the rinse-and-chill technology hopes to revolutionize the world's slaughterhouses by improving beef quality and food safety.
"We're not adding chemicals," said Warner Ide, president of MPSC Inc. of St. Paul, Minn. "We're just reducing blood."
Early research suggests they may be on to something.
Not only do tests suggest a cleaner carcass in the packing house, but ground chuck made with the technique actually kills bacteria that usually thrive in red meat. One university researcher said she has seen year-old rinse-and-chill hamburger - not frozen, merely refrigerated - that she would gladly eat.
"Look at that. Look at that," said Grindinger, cupping a hand beneath the slit throat of a black and muddy steer, bloody water pooling in his palm. "It looks like cherry Kool-Aid."
He pointed to the limpness of the carcass after only a few minutes. Won't find that in the big packing houses, he said. Wouldn't have found it here at tiny G & C Packing Co. a few years ago.
The flushed-out blood and slack carcass - Grindinger used to see legs shake hours after a kill - comes from rinsing the bloodstream with cold water to more swiftly purge all life from the creature.
The cool rinse also drops pH levels quickly and evenly, which tends to produce juicier meat. Some parts of the animal, flesh on the neck, for instance, becomes easier to harvest because it is not spoiled by clotted blood.
The rinse-and-chill process has been developed over the last 15 years. After pilot tests overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it is now government-approved in this country and Australia.
While developed with the idea of creating a more savory steak, anecdotes about longer shelf life prompted research to explore its ability to improve food safety.
Researchers find the results dramatic.
In two studies, one involving 180 carcasses and the other 100, comparisons were made of conventionally slaughtered cattle versus those rinsed and chilled.
Coliform levels on the rinse-and-chill carcasses were 99 percent below normal, salmonella and potentially deadly E.coli 0157:H7 were missing completely.
In other tests, rinse-and-chill ground beef was compared with conventional hamburger after being deliberately infected with salmonella and E.coli. Rather than thrive, the bacteria perished.
"This method seems to have a protective effect all the way through," said microbiologist Joellen Feirtag, an associate professor of food science at the University of Minnesota.
A marketing squeeze
That suggests a bonanza to the beef industry, periodically troubled by contamination of ground beef from its increasingly concentrated packing plants.
Four persons died and hundreds fell ill in the Northwest in 1993 from an E.coli outbreak. Last year, contamination forced ConAgra beef to recall 18.6 million pounds of beef from its Greeley, Colo., plant.
Partly in response to that, the industry recently pushed through USDA approval of irradiation of specially marked hamburger and spent millions to cleanse the process of converting steers to steaks. In many plants, cattle go through a sort of cow car wash after being stunned but before the blood is drained from their bodies. Packing houses now often also steam pasteurize the skinned carcass.
Neither of those techniques, Feirtag said, appear to match the germ-killing results of rinse-and-chill.
Yet MPSC's Ide said his company is caught in a marketing squeeze.
"You'd be crazy to make a food safety claim. The minute something goes wrong, you get sued," he said, noting that the last defense against food poisoning is in a million kitchens of irregular hygiene. "It's complicated and a hassle."
Meantime, the industry is reluctant to take on such a significant change, and expense, on the packing house floor. MPSC charges a confidential fee for each animal slaughtered with its method that can add two to five minutes to beef processing.
So far, it has been used on about 1 million cattle over several years, always in smaller packing houses. About 100 million cattle are slaughtered annually in the United States.
For about four months in 2001, steaks produced from rinse-and-chill meat packers were served at Pierpont's at Union Station and the Independence Hereford House restaurants.
"Everybody loved it," said Rod Anderson, president and owner of the restaurants. "Really clean taste. Very tender...Just little bit of salt made this eat so well." Prime rib, he said, got especially rave reviews from customers.
But probably because the technique was so new, Anderson found supplies unreliable, and the meat did not always arrive cut they way he wanted.
"We couldn't run the restaurants and be pioneers in the cattle industry," he said.
Still, Anderson sees its promise. Higher beef prices are enticing ranchers to bring their cattle to slaughter earlier, sometimes before they've fully marbled the flesh with fat. That means more carcasses are grading as "select" rather than the higher USDA grade of "choice."
With the advantage of rinse-and-chill, an animal graded as select could taste choice, Anderson said.
Grindinger's clients tend to like his operation for its ability to improve what they produce, but he is uncertain that the added cost will pay off for him.
"Trying to market it to the consumer is all but impossible," said Grindinger, noting again that people tend not to want to explore slaughter methods at the dinner table. His clients "say, 'Yeah, this is great, but what do I call it?' "
To reach Scott Canon, national correspondent, call (816) 234-4754 or send e-mail to scanon@kcstar.com.
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Note: G&C Packing Co. processes all the Ranch Foods Direct, Calicrate Beef cattle which are distributed from the new Colorado Springs Ranch Foods fabrication facility and retail store.
"The best sirloin I have ever tasted," Todd Brooks, Executive Chef
www.ranchfoodsdirect.com
Mike Callicrate
P.O. Box 748
St. Francis, KS 67756
785-332-3344
mike@nobull.net
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