Bone control - chicken fillet - any procedures apart from X-Ray?

Good morning to Everobody,

Do you have any procedures/instructions for bone control (apart from X-Ray) in chicken fillet? Fillets are being deboned manually.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Have a nice day!

Regards,

Iwona

Iwona

I have worked on a mechanically and hand deboned fillet lines as well.  We would run 110 fillets a minute and our line was set up as such; 4 people spacing/pulling fat/removing large bones/removing bad product, 2 people cutting bones/upgrading tears/scuffs. Then the product went through an Xray- in the event the Xray went down we staffed 2 extra people after the Xray manually feeling for bones and sending those fillets back to the cutters.  Xrays were by far the best in my opinion

G

Good morning!

Thank you for your reply. We are running about 320 fillets per minute. De-skinning staff, then deboning crew, checks at the end of the line. I am looking for a solution to improve this process, so the bones are 100% eliminated. That is why I was thinking about X-Ray - do not have an experience with this equipment, but heard different opininions. From your experience - would X-Ray, apart from small bones, detect small cartilages?

Have a nice day!

Iwona

There is much debate about X-Rays picking up fish and poultry bone. My 15 years with X-ray's or so have found that it's still not a 'silver bullet' solution.

Smaller bones do not have enough density to be picked up. I'd say most will be picked up but some will be missed.

Good controls and skills on cutting and inspection is still vital despite what any X-ray supplier will tell you!

In very basic terms the X-ray passes light through the product and each beam of light is measured on the grey scale 0-255 value.

When you set up you teach it what value is acceptable, much like you do with a metal detector.

A contaminant is highlighted as a darker shade of grey than the product basically.

You'll find it will pick up much lower levels of metal than a MD, just DONT expect it to pick the smallest soft bone.

In most food-based products X-ray systems cannot detect the following materials

• Low-density plastics
• Thin glass, such as fluorescent tubes
• Low-density stones
• Insects
• Wood
• Hair
• Cardboard
• Paper

Hi, would just like to add that if you decide to look at X-ray then you should be looking for solution that uses a 'dual energy' detection principle. With 'normal' single energy systems there is not enough density in poultry bones (particularly rib and fan bones) to be detected consistently. Dual energy systems help to a degree to solve this problem, still not 100% bone detection but a much higher probability of detection compared to other solutions. Many still do a 100% manual check and then X-ray also.

Hi Iwona

I have worked in the poultry industry for a number of year and have learnt the hard way on bone control. A company I worked for many years ago supplied chicken to M&S. We decided in our wisdom to put X-ray in and our complaints went through the roof. The problem with chicken is that the birds are very young and the bones are immature and nowhere near dense enough to be adequately detected by X-ray every time. I know there have been many improvements since then in detection but these units tend to be extremely expensive.

Personally speaking I don't think you can beat a motivated team that checks by hand. For me personally without gloves, as the use of gloves reduce the sensitivity for detecting some small bones. This team would need to rotate onto other jobs fairly frequently so they don't become bored. On top of this there was also a Process Control or QA check at a given frequency of say 30 mins or hourly to check a known quantity of pre checked material, to ensure the checkers remain focused and effective.

Alternatively you may choose to put x-ray in and have some form of checking post this, which is what my original company did, which did speed up the process. but still wasn't 100% effective.

You could also look at the deboners and see whether changing the way they debone slightly might reduce the risk of bone contamination?

I hope this helps.

Sheena

Good afternoon Everyone,

Thank you for your help. Indeed, I also think, that there is nothing much more effective than manual checks. I am afraid, than when installing an X-Ray the deboners focusing would be decreased. Maybe the "dual energy" system would help a lot, but still I don't have 100% assurance. What we are doing apart from trainings, are also regular QC checks and results are announced to the whole crew, so I can see a kind of rivalry among the filleting teams - which is good. I am constantly looking for new solutions, ideas in terms of bone control.

Regards,

Iwona