In April 2009, Cargill Beef announced it had implemented a third-party video-auditing system that would operate 24 hours a day at its U.S. beef plants to enhance the company’s animal welfare protection systems. All of Cargill’s U.S. plants were expected to have the program in place by the end of 2009.

In Feb. 2010, Cargill announced its expanded remote video auditing program will monitor food-safety procedures within its 10 beef-harvest facilities in North America.

Angie Siemens, Cargill technical services vice president for food safety and quality, said,

“We’re working to eliminate the opportunity for cross-contamination. We want to have the right steps at the beginning of our process to enhance the efficacy of our intervention technologies later in the process. The major objective of the video auditing application is to design a ground-breaking program that can further reduce the E. coli and Salmonella contamination.”

Yesterday, Meatingplace.com reported that JBS USA’s beef division is installing remote video-surveillance camera systems at all of its eight beef plants to enhance food safety, product quality and animal handling.

John Ruby, head of technical services for JBS USA’s beef division, said in a news release the system helped the company improve the accuracy of its auditing within weeks of implementation. JBS uses the system to measure the performance of its workers and give them immediate feedback, ultimately helping to improve its food safety systems.