AI Is Helping Automate One of the World’s Most Gruesome Jobs

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AI Is Helping Automate One of the World’s Most Gruesome Jobs

By Gerson Freitas Jr and Isis Almeida | Bloomberg Businessweek | May 1, 2024

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Disassembling livestock remains a messy business.  Leaving even a fraction of an ounce of meat on the bone can erode margins over time. Although robots don’t fall victim to injuries or illness, as people can, humans possess an ability to make on-the-fly decisions for each uniquely sized cow, chicken or hog coming down the line. That’s traditionally given them the upper hand in precision butchery.

That may be about to change. Thanks to recent advancements in machine learning, computer vision and artificial intelligence, the hardest-to-automate tasks, such as carving the perfect chicken breast or meticulously breaking down massive hogs or cows, are finally within reach. If applied on a commercial scale, the technology has the potential to ease the industry’s long-standing labor vulnerability—fully on display during the Covid-19 pandemic, when employee absenteeism contributed to bare supermarket shelves.

Automation has long been on processors’ wish lists. Their plants are cold and humid with a high turnover rate, making staffing a persistent challenge. But raising productivity became especially important during the pandemic, when the industry was slammed with a severe shortage of workers, many of whom fell sick on the job while laboring in close quarters. More recently, the US sector has been hit by a supply glut and high animal feed costs, which have highlighted the need to reduce expenses and boost margins.

At Wayne-Sanderson Farms, a poultry joint venture between Cargill and Continental Grain Co., robots now perform almost two-thirds of all chicken deboning, more than twice the rate before the pandemic.

Companies say automation doesn’t necessarily mean a big reduction in head count; instead, they can reassign workers to other roles such as inspection or, frequently, just plug holes where workers have quit.

Smithfield Foods, the largest US pork producer, this year expects to spend more than double what it invested in automation in 2021. Smithfield, owned by Hong Kong-based WH Group Ltd., has reduced its factory floor operational workforce 6% over the past three years, helping the company weather its high turnover rates.

Automation has been much slower in pork and beef butchery, where the size of animals can vary by tens or hundreds of pounds, making the breakdown almost surgical in nature.  Only a very small percentage of beef processing can be automated because the technology is either not ready or not scalable. But that could change fast as the tech improves. Meat processors are putting more capital into technology projects.

3 key takeaways from the article

1. Disassembling livestock remains a messy business. Thanks to recent advancements in machine learning, computer vision and artificial intelligence, the hardest-to-automate tasks, such as carving the perfect chicken breast or meticulously breaking down massive hogs or cows, are finally within reach. If applied on a commercial scale, the technology has the potential to ease the industry’s long-standing labor vulnerability.
2. Automation has been much slower in pork and beef butchery, where the size of animals can vary by tens or hundreds of pounds, making the breakdown almost surgical in nature.  Only a very small percentage of beef processing can be automated because the technology is either not ready or not scalable. But that could change fast as the tech improves. Meat processors are putting more capital into technology projects.
3. Companies say automation doesn’t necessarily mean a big reduction in head count; instead, they can reassign workers to other roles such as inspection or, frequently, just plug holes where workers have quit.

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Topics:  Meat, Technology, Labor, Capital, Productivity, Efficiency