title: Conservation of water for washing beef heads at harvest.
abstract: The objective of this research was to develop methods to conserve water necessary to cleanse beef heads prior to USDA-FSIS inspection. This was to be accomplished by establishing a baseline for the minimum amount of water necessary to adequately wash a head and application of image analysis to provide an objective measure of head cleaning. Twenty-one beef heads were manually washed during the harvest process. An average 18.75 L (2.49 SD) and a maximum of 23.88 L were required to cleanse the heads to USDA-FSIS standards. Digital images were captured before and after manual washing then evaluated for percentage red saturation using commercially available image analysis software. A decaying exponential curve extracted from these data indicated that as wash water increased beyond 20 L the impact on red saturation decreased. At 4 sigma from the mean of 18.75 L, red saturation is 16.0 percent, at which logistic regression analysis indicates 99.994 percent of heads would be accepted for inspection, or less than 1 head in 15,000 would be rejected. Reducing to 3 sigma would increase red saturation to 27.6 percent, for which 99.730 percent of heads likely would be accepted (less than 1 in 370 would be rejected).
authors.affiliation: West Texas A&M University, Department of Agricultural Sciences, Canyon, TX 79016, USA.
authors.forename: R E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: DeOtte
authors.forename: K S
authors.initials: KS
authors.lastname: Spivey
authors.forename: H O
authors.initials: HO
authors.lastname: Galloway
authors.forename: T E
authors.initials: TE
authors.lastname: Lawrence
mesh_terms: D000003:Abattoirs / Q000191:economics; D000818:Animals; D002417:Cattle; D003116:Color; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000191:economics; D003257:Consumer Product Safety; D005506:Food Contamination / Q000517:prevention & control*; D005511:Food Handling / Q000379:methods*; D005513:Food Inspection; D006225:Hand; D006257:Head; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D016015:Logistic Models; D008460:Meat / Q000592:standards*; D014481:United States; D016885:United States Department of Agriculture; D014867:Water; D014881:Water Supply / Q000191:economics*
chemical_list: D014867:Water