The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) recently published the “21st Century Meat Inspector” project report. The project investigated how new and existing inspection technologies can be combined with advanced data analytics to improve UK meat inspection practices, with a specific focus on poultry.
According to the project report, poultry is the most widely consumed meat in the UK. However, poultry inspection is performed manually and is challenging to execute due to time constraints conflicting with the thoroughness and concentration necessary to inspect each bird that is processed at a facility. For context, the report states that one facility slaughters 250,000 birds per day, with only two full-time meat inspectors responsible for the inspection of each bird.