Robots Help Indiana Egg Farmers Improve Food Safety

One of the biggest agricultural issues in 2010 was also one of the biggest consumer issues: food recalls. The beef industry, the pork industry, the feed industry, and most notably the egg industry were all hit with nationwide food recalls that made headlines and had consumers asking, “Is my food safe?” But with the increased use of robots in food processing and packaging, food recalls may become less frequent and much easier to deal with.

Scott Gilmore is the CEO of Smart Motion Robotics, a firm that specializes in building robots for farm and food processors. He told HAT more and more egg farms are turning to robots as a way of reducing expensive food safety problems, “These recalls means producers need a better way to track the product from the store all the way back to the production facility.” His system will let egg producers track an egg from the retail location all the way back to the hen house it came from, quickly and accurately. Not only can the robots handle the eggs more safely, faster, and more accurately, but they can inspect and reject them, “The robot can inspect the eggs and reject any that show signs of problems before they ever get to the consumer.”

Gilmore said the egg industry is not the only industry turning to robots to handle food products, “We put in a system for a large confectionary firm in Lake County that makes gummie worms; it is a completely automated system.” His firm has also developed robots for Kent feeds. Even the meat packing and processing plants are turning to robotic systems, “There is a hog processing plant in Canada that uses our robots.”

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