Contaminants in processed meat products – whether they be metal filings, pieces of glass or even simple chunks of bone – are not only upsetting to end consumers, they can also lead to costly product recalls and even risk ruining reputations.
Ensuring – as far as possible – that such situations do not arise at busy processing facilities has been a key objective behind the creation, and subsequent success, of XVision, an ingenious JBT system that helps overcome many of the common pitfalls associated with scanning for contaminants.
Dino Carbone, Division Product Manager – JBT XVision, explains that the system is typically used for raw and packaged protein products, including raw incoming poultry, ground meat, hotdog sausages, tray products, ready-to-eat products, pork, and bacon, among many others.
“XVision looks for contaminants introduced during the production process, as well as bone,” he says. “Typical contaminants include basic metals – stainless steel, ferrous and non-ferrous metals – but x-rays can also detect glass, bone, and dense rubbers that you see in many types of steels and gasketing.”
High sensitivity
JBT counts one of the largest food production companies in the world among its XVision customers; a company which uses some 20 XVision machines to inspect meat at its ground beef plant. XVision is also used by many leading processors in the pork sector for ham, bacon and raw pork products, while the system is gaining increasing traction in the poultry sector, scanning raw bulk poultry for bone as well as contaminants.
“One of the advantages of our machine is it can look for bone and contaminants at the same high sensitivity,” says Carbone. “Whereas most other machines lose their sensitivity to other contaminants if they are looking for bone, our machine can be tuned for both, and do both equally well.”
Another feature that has proven popular among customers is XVision’s ease-of-maintenance, even in challenging conditions. “What our customers really like about our equipment is our internal modules and their plug-and-play design, which allows local personnel to keep the unit maintained in a very cost-effective way,” continues Carbone. “They also like the fact that the machine has been designed to operate in a wet production environment. Not many machines can survive in wet production, high pressure conditions, but our machine can.”
Already available in North America, XVision will be launching in Europe and Asia in late 2018-early 2019.