Meet the robots slicing your barbecue ribs

livemint.com:

In Denison, Iowa, a robot spends eight hours a day slicing apart hog carcasses at a plant owned by Smithfield Foods. It serves a dual purpose: producing more ribs for barbecues and smokers, while helping ease the U.S. meat industry’s long-running labor shortages.

Meatpackers are increasingly looking to robots for help. Smithfield, the largest U.S. pork processor, began rolling out automated rib pullers at its pork plants several years ago, which company officials said helps leave less wasted meat on the bone and relieves workers from some of the industry’s most physically demanding jobs—allowing workers to be reassigned from pulling loins or ribs to food-quality inspection jobs.

Keller Watts, chief business officer for Smithfield, said the company, which has roughly 35,000 employees in the U.S., aims to use automation to help reassign some 500 people a year. “We can repurpose people," he said. “It’s a key focal point for us." Meatpacking jobs can be some of the toughest, bloodiest and most dangerous around, and companies such as Smithfield, Tyson Foods and Cargill have long struggled to fully staff slaughterhouses and processing plants.

Workers might have to stand for hours a day, often in cold temperatures, repeatedly slicing livestock carcasses on fast-moving processing lines or moving heavy boxes of frozen meat. Short-staffed plants that aren’t able to process farmers’ livestock can hinder meat companies’ sales and limit their ability to expand. Raising wages or offering signing bonuses to attract plant workers eats into processors’ profitability.