From farm to fork

Webbs' Black Simmentals

Owners of Webb

Today proved to be a pretty interesting day.  We started off the morning on a visit that we were very privileged to get to go on, a full tour of the JBS Swift abattoir. They slaughter 5,000 sheep and 1,200 cattle a day. Being in the animal science department of KSU I have taken meat science and been through the small abattoir that KSU has so the process itself was nothing new, but the scale that JBS operated on was something way larger than I ever imagined. They employ 1,100 people at the Melbourne site alone over several shifts, each person having a very specific job. The engineering behind the operation was very efficient and concise. Because we were able to follow the whole process from live animal to packaging it made it very clear how everything worked together. The machinery was also another thing that I was impressed with, there were machines that could sense the cut of meat and send them on the appropriate conveyer belt. there also was an automated packaging machine that would sense the size of the meat and inflate the correct size of bag as well as put it in the bag in a matter of seconds. As an example of the size of the operation, there were holes in the floor on each of the boning areas at the end of the waste belts. Curiosity took over and I was able to roughly able to calculate that the bins were about 20 meters deep by how long i took the bones to hit the bottom.

A group of us the one of the owners

The view of some pasture owned by Webb

We then moved on to have lunch at a tavern where I had what has been my favorite meal so far, chicken breast over mushroom risotto. Refueled, we then carried on to our first adventure in the country at Webb Black Simmentals. The owners were very happy to have us there and were more than willing to answer any questions we had. They felt connected to us because they had acquired some of their bloodlines from the US. As a farm they have had problems with getting their breed started because a a bad production history bringing a bad aura to the breed name. This and a lack of the breed of itself have been major challenges for them as a farm. We are currently en route to Seymour where we will spend the night before visiting Angus and Hereford operations.