Equipment for controlled fat trimming of lamb chops

Abstract

People are becoming increasingly health conscious and consequently there is a growing demand for lower fat products. For many meat products fat reduction is achieved by manual trimming, however, labour problems are causing manufacturers and processors to investigate alternatives. Water-jet based trimming machines have been on the market for some time but their size and cost limit their usefulness for many manufacturers. Specific equipment for trimming common joints is another option, e.g. automated loin pullers, but such equipment can be too complex or expensive for many meat producers. This paper describes the first stage of research and development carried out to design and build a relatively low-cost demonstrator system for the automatic trimming of lamb chops to leave a user-determined fat thickness remaining. Machine vision provides fat thickness data along the length of each chop. The system then conforms the meat section to place the fat–lean interface at the desired fat thickness from a fixed cutting path. The cutting path is thus simplified and can be made with basic tools and an uncomplicated trajectory. After the cut is complete, the meat section is released and returns to its natural shape but with a uniform covering of fat over the fat–lean interface. Industrial plant trials with the demonstrator system have achieved improved accuracy and product appearance over manual trimming.