Food and beverage
Cutting: one carcass into twenty products
It comes in identified and leaves in twenty boxes. What decides whether you can look back is how it is grouped, not how it is cut.
At intake, each carcass carries its identification and everything is clear. At despatch there are boxes by product, not by origin. Between the two is a room where several carcasses are worked at once, and what happens there decides whether it will ever be possible to say where a given cut came from.
The three ways to group, and what each costs
| How the batch is grouped | Precision | Working cost |
|---|---|---|
| By individual carcass | Highest | High: only worth it for very specific product |
| **By day or by shift** | **Reasonable** | **What almost everyone does** |
| By week | Low: an incident takes a lot with it | Low, and expensive on the day it fails |
Important
**The decision is economic rather than technical, and it should be taken looking at the worst day: the bigger the batch, the more product is held when something fails.** Grouping by week saves a few minutes of recording a day and can cost a whole week's production. Grouping by shift costs a little more and bounds the problem to hours. It is literally the same calculation as defining a batch in any sector, only here it bites sooner.
What must be recorded without exception
- 1
Which carcasses entered each cutting batch
It is the link between what arrived and what leaves.
- 2
Which products left that batch and in what quantity
Without it nothing can be bounded forwards.
- 3
Cleaning between batches, where it separates two origins
It is what supports the claim that they did not mix.
- 4
And what went to each client, from which batch
The last piece, and the first one asked for in an alert.
Watch out
The two points that break the system from inside and appear in no record: **rework and trimmings**. Product re-entering the line, or offcuts gathered for another product, carry the origin of everything present at that moment. If that is not recorded, a «clean» batch can contain material from three others nobody logged — and on the day something has to be bounded, your calculation will be wrong without anyone knowing.
Worth knowing
What health rules require in identification, records and separation in a cutting room is set by the applicable hygiene and traceability rules and by your authorisation's conditions. **Your quality manager or health authority settles that**; here we explain the grouping decision, which is yours and which determines everything else.
›Do I have to trace by carcass?
Only where the product justifies it. By shift is standard and usually suffices.
›What about reworked product?
Record it. It is what most often invalidates a scope calculation.
›How long do I keep the records?
At least the life of the product despatched, with margin.
A real case
The situation
The cutting batch is weekly and an incident forces five days' production to be held.
What you do
- Switches to grouping by shift and records which carcasses enter each batch
What you get
The next incident is bounded to a few hours of work.
The situation
Trimmings from three different batches are reworked with nothing recorded.
What you do
- Logs the rework, stating which batches the material came from
What you get
The scope calculation describes what is actually in each box.
The situation
An alert arrives and nobody knows which clients received the affected batch.
What you do
- Records what went to each client, and from which batch, at despatch
What you get
Client notification goes out same-day instead of three days later.
The situation
The carcass arrives identified and the boxes leave without a reference.
What you do
- Ties each box to the cutting batch
What you get
The backward journey survives the cut.
The situation
Carcasses from several intakes are grouped into one batch.
What you do
- Records what went into each batch
What you get
You can say what came from where.
The situation
A client asks about one specific box.
What you do
- Checks that box's batch
What you get
You reach the holding of origin.
This article answers
- cutting room traceability
- how cutting batches are grouped
- which carcass did this cut come from
- production batch in meat processing