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November 1, 2004
The social structure and operation of a food plant
The fundamental difference between Processing and Manufacturing was summed up for me some years ago by a Food Plant Manager. In Manufacturing, he explained, you take in many kinds of raw materials to assemble a lot of identical items for sale. In Processing, you take in a lot of very similar source items and, especially if they are animals, you take them apart to create a variety of items for sale which can vary on a daily basis depending on which machines you decide to use in the taking-apart process.
This has all kinds of subtle implications.
The Manufacturer can lay out specifications for his raw materials; even a mine will sort material to a certain grade before feeding it to processing machinery. As a result, manufacturing machinery tends not to change a lot once it's installed and working. But the raw input to a Food Plant is a series of variable individuals. Despite the staunchest efforts at controlled breeding and factory farming chicken and catfish and pigs and cows arrive at the Plant with variations. Some are larger than others, some are pecked or bitten or abused, some are diseased, and some are already dead (and these can't be sold to you for human consumption, thus the absurd-sounding requirement that cows be able to walk into the slaughterhouse).
Posted by thdyck on November 1, 2004
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