---
id: KB-AL-024
url: https://app.codecontract.io/help/food-and-beverage/cutting-one-carcass-into-twenty-products
idioma: en
categoria: sector-alimentacion
subcategoria: carnica
audiencia: usuario
nivel: avanzado
actualizado: 2026-08-13
tambienEn: [es]
relacionados: [KB-AL-001, KB-GL-020]
citadoPor: [KB-AL-018]
---

# 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._

**Responde a:** cutting room traceability · how cutting batches are grouped · which carcass did this cut come from · production batch in meat processing

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.

> [!WARNING]
> 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.

> [!NOTE]
> 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.

## Ejemplos

**The cutting batch is weekly and an incident forces five days' production to be held.**

- Switches to grouping by shift and records which carcasses enter each batch

→ The next incident is bounded to a few hours of work.

**Trimmings from three different batches are reworked with nothing recorded.**

- Logs the rework, stating which batches the material came from

→ The scope calculation describes what is actually in each box.

**An alert arrives and nobody knows which clients received the affected batch.**

- Records what went to each client, and from which batch, at despatch

→ Client notification goes out same-day instead of three days later.

**The carcass arrives identified and the boxes leave without a reference.**

- Ties each box to the cutting batch

→ The backward journey survives the cut.

**Carcasses from several intakes are grouped into one batch.**

- Records what went into each batch

→ You can say what came from where.

**A client asks about one specific box.**

- Checks that box's batch

→ You reach the holding of origin.