Meatpackers may as well put up a sign: No robots need apply, says KUNC’s Luke Runyon in a story on the limits of technology and the economics of meat plants. “Robots have revolutionized manufacturing across the globe. Yet it still takes thousands of workers with knives and meat hooks, and very little automation, to keep a modern beef plant up and running.” At the JBS processing plant in Greeley, Colorado, “disassembly is the name of the game,” with workers assigned to each step of transforming a carcass “into neat and trim cuts like tenderloins, steaks and roasts.” Plant manager Bill Danley “lists some of the titles: a chuck boner, tender puller, back splitter, knuckle dropper, tail ripper.”
Robot technology doesn’t have the fine touch that is required for producing top-quality cuts of meat from animals that vary in size, JBS officials tell KUNC. Anthropologist Don Stull, the author of “Slaughterhouse Blues,” says the meat industry may never move to large-scale automation. “As long as there is a steady supply, workers are relatively inexpensive.” Median annual pay for a worker in a meat plant was $23,320 during 2012, says KUNC. “Some jobs take less than a week to master.”