Engineering a Safer Burger Technology Is Entrepreneur's Main
Ingredient for Bacteria-Free Beef Thursday, June 12, 2008; Page
D01 SOUTH SIOUX CITY, Neb. -- The key to a safer meat supply may
be in a two-story white building next to a meat-packing plant
just south of the Missouri River. The building houses a
processing plant that produces frozen lean beef used in 75
percent of hamburger patties sold in the United States. It is
also a fortress against potentially lethal bacteria. Practically
everything inside was designed to prevent microbes from settling
in. The walls of the processing room consist of stainless-steel
panels set in concrete to keep organisms from building up behind
them. Every pipe, piece of equipment and sign is set off from
the wall by several inches for the same reason. The air pressure
is higher inside than out to keep airborne bacteria from
wandering in. And the air itself is constantly sanitized with
the help of two massive turbines. The noise they make is
deafening. It's like being inside