Tyson Bets On Robots To Tackle Meat Industry's Worker Shortage (bloomberg.com) 63
At Tyson's 26,000-square-foot, multi-million dollar Manufacturing Automation Center near its headquarters in Springdale, Arkansas, the company will apply the latest advances in machine learning to meat manufacturing, with the goal of eventually eliminating jobs that can be physically demanding, highly repetitive and at times dangerous. Bloomberg reports: Advances in technology are making it possible to make strides in automation. For example, machine vision is now accurate and speedy enough to apply to meat production, which is highly labor intensive compared with other food manufacturing. Also, a lot of washing and sanitizing occurs in a meat-packing plant, which has traditionally been difficult on robots, but now the machines are built to withstand that. At Tyson's new facility, a series of laboratories showcase different types of robots. Mechanical arms in glass cases use smart cameras to sort colorful objects or stack items. In another room, a larger machine called a palletizer performs stacking tasks. There's also a training space.
Many of the types of robots that a meatpacking plant would need are not on the market currently, so the company needs to innovate and collaborate with partners to create them, said Doug Foreman, a director in engineering at Tyson. But the technology is ready. The processing capabilities of cameras are "so advanced even from a few years ago," Foreman said. "Processing-speed-wise, it's there now for us."
Many of the types of robots that a meatpacking plant would need are not on the market currently, so the company needs to innovate and collaborate with partners to create them, said Doug Foreman, a director in engineering at Tyson. But the technology is ready. The processing capabilities of cameras are "so advanced even from a few years ago," Foreman said. "Processing-speed-wise, it's there now for us."
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Wrong meat industry.
Re: Homosex is a SIN. (Score:3)
If you truly believed that, you wouldn't spend so much time thinking about it.
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Less need anyway. Actually, in some places, meat processors use released felons for labor as well. So no need for THEM either. Oops.
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During a long union strike, kenny had our Greely plant highly automated. There was nothing else like it in the world. And all the other companies said that it would never work. That not only worked, but the much lower cost/higher profits allow
No need for migrant workers then (Score:3)
Vat-grown beef would take even more labor out of the picture, easier to automate, and safer overall. Not to mention easier to site, since most don't want the smell of a meat-processing plant next door.
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Oh I know, hence why I said "less need". Still gotta clean the machines and all that.
It might let the processors switch to legal labor in greater quantity - something the local processors were forced to do over a decade ago when the INS/ICE started hitting them repeatedly. It's easier to keep large quantities of "migrant" laborers on the payroll if your plant is out in the country. Site one in a small city and you attract attention.
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Doesn't change the fact that the plants run by Pilgrim's Pride and Koch's locally can't/won't hire migrant workers in significant quantity. A small Hispanic neighborhood on the Southside essentially evaporated when that business went down during the Bush administration.
Yes, there needs to be more pressure on employers to stop hiring workers who are in the country illegally. In general. There are some employers who have had their chops busted in the past though.
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Like W, trump is just playing games with illegals. If he REALLY wanted to solve this, he would require a strong e-verify on all businesses. In addition, REAL penalties on businesses that knowingly hire them.
He would also cut a deal so that clean DACAs that have been in our school for 2+
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Yeah stuff like that was happening around here 15 years ago under Bush actually. Though it was kept kinda quiet. The plant managers are still pissed. We had one on the radio basically saying, "we could get them to do anything". For really low pay, too, which was the unspoken subtext. Now the processors have to start people out at $14/hr just to get people in the door. Boy they do hate that!
As an added twist, the more legal labor you have in these facilities, the more reporting you have to do for Covid
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Meat is ... job murder? (Score:2)
I don't know, I think if we use robots for the meat industry it would take the cruelty out of it.
A lot of the "meat is murder" nuts fail to consider that
- what drives meat consumption is not the marketing, but the availability
- if cheaper alternatives exist (Eg plant based meat, lab-grown meat), people would pick that over factory farmed meat only if it provides the same texture and taste as actual meat
Humans are not designed to subsist only on vegetables, you can if you are really really good about what yo
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Meat processing is a very hard job that is very dangerous People who can do other things or get welfare do so. That leaves immigrants.
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Humans are not designed to subsist only on vegetables
Uh wrong. We are omnivores. It is QUITE easy for us to be vegetarians. What is NOT easy is picking the right combination of veggies to make sure that you get all your amino acids, esp. in western markets.
..... change them. When you walk by these ppl, you KNOW who is working the kill floor. The look in the eyes spoke loudly.
Sadly, the hardest job in this industry, is the kill floor and there is NO getting away from that. And those that work it, it tends to
I have to wonder, how many Dexters are created
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It is damn hard to be a veg-o-nut and be healthy. We are not meant to live on plants only. We are meant to have a well balanced diet that includes both meat and vegs.
"Hardest job" is being an actual human that knows where there food comes from? Fuck off. That is half the problem with modern society and why we do not treat animals humanely. If we all had to kill at least some of our food every year the world would be a better place as we would not allow half the shit that big corps do for the sake o
Re: Meat is ... job murder? (Score:3)
Don't say "Bullshit" just because your world view is limited to your small corner of it. There are hundreds of millions of people in the world that are pure vegetarian. If we were talking about vegan or fruitarian there would be a point.
But vegetarian is actually very easy! A good chuck of India easily subsides on wheat/rice, yogurt, beans, lentils, and leafy greens. Just pick 3 in there and you completed your body requirements. The last three of which are easy to grow.
Even China, until 3 decades ago,
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A good chuck of India easily subsides on wheat/rice, yogurt, beans, lentils, and leafy greens.
And the insects that contaminate them, without which they'd suffer from pernicious anemia, a horrible, brain-damaging, deficiency of vitamin B-12.
The problems for isn't just proteins. Vitamins are also all necessary, and B-12 is a particular problem. It is manufactured ONLY by bacteria and archaea (another class of not-quite-bacteria microbes) and humans don't get enough from their own intestinal flora or the tra
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I think you are mixing up vegitarians and vegans. B12 deficiency is a general problem all around the world. Its especially bad in India, but not necessarily related to your diet group. More to do with nutrition issue in general, veg or non-veg. But vegans do have to keep an eye on it. Other nations have this issue too. The US solves this problem with lots of "fortified" foods; and that is the general recommendation all over the world. Rather than load up on excess of all the other vitamens, minerals,
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And the insects that contaminate them, without which they'd suffer from pernicious anemia, a horrible, brain-damaging, deficiency of vitamin B-12.
LOL. Thank you for the good laugh. Insects are NOT providing vegetarians with large amounts of B-12.
HOWEVER, one thing about get a degree in Microbiology, is that you have to take lots of Food science (yogurt, beer, mead, cheese, wine, etc just to name a few). But, part of food science is knowing what you do NOT want in your food. Humorously, all those spices and teas that we obtain from poorer nations? ALL of them have rat droppings, insects, various pesticides, poisons, etc. Thankfully, it is small amou
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A good chuck of India easily subsides on wheat/rice, yogurt, beans, lentils, and leafy greens. Just pick 3 in there and you completed your body requirements. The last three of which are easy to grow.
Even China, until 3 decades ago, the vast majority lived primarily on non-animal foods.
Life expectancy in India is #135 out of 191 countries.
https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]
I'm sure it is not all down to diet, but it is a fair question to ask if a more diverse diet would make it better or worse. We need not even discuss life expectancy in the 1600s as most people died young enough that diet probably did not matter either way.
Re: Meat is ... job murder? (Score:2)
Let's not go down that path. Because the correlation actually leans toward vegetarians. But actual measurement of cause effect is heavily muddied by a ton of other factors.
https://www.livestrong.com/art... [livestrong.com]
Basically you can have perfectly healthy vegetarians and non-veg. Looking at the science, a vegetarian who eats greasy French fries all day isn't going to be healthy. A meat eater who doesn't offset his cholesterol intake with exercise is going to face a number of cancer and heart health risks.
I would say
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I skimmed the study under discussion.
https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/... [oup.com]
No question the fact that the countries with the highest life expectancies tend toward higher meat consumption and the lowest life expectancy countries tend toward less is much too simple and comparing meat eaters to non meat eaters in specific societies is a better methodology. However other studies have come to the opposite conclusions.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
There are so many factors to control for that I'm not sure I'd read
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Kisai misstated:
Humans are not designed to subsist only on vegetables ...
Humans are not designed, period.
We evolved as savannah-based omnivores - more specifically, as nomadic hunter-gatherers, well-adapted to eat anything that wasn't actively poisonous.
Oh, and a diet of corn and beans - along with supplements to provide necessary trace elements - provides a human with all the essential amino acids needed to survive and thrive. The same is true of a diet that consists exclusively of whole-grain rice ...
Who else thought Mike Tyson first? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Who else thought Mike Tyson first? (Score:4, Funny)
Well, somebody's got to remove the ears...
Could be a plot for a Twilight Zone episode (Score:5, Funny)
All will be well and good unless the robots start to take on an expansive interpretation of their jobs of producing meat. Then they might run amok and turn on their creators, slaughtering them all and turning them into cold cuts and sausages with ruthless efficiency.
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Solyent Green
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Good reply, but those people were not working for the factory.
I think Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee [wikipedia.org] is a more appropriate reference [youtube.com].
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Doubters like you will surely be the first to get shrink-wrapped.
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No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame
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It doesn't take a lot of intelligence, just the opposite. Tree chippers aren't that smart and they have occasionally "turned on their masters".
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A not all that smart AI with a vision system might well pick up the wrong thing with a head and 4 major appendages...
Re: Could be a plot for a Twilight Zone episode (Score:2)
Weird way to describe a human behind a wheel.
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I feel a correction is necessary here. K.I.T.T. didn't have an English accent. K.I.T.T. had a Boston accent. The actor is the same actor who played Mr. Feeny on _Boy Meets World_.
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Hold on, Mr. Waffle Iron. While it sounds like you are made of slippery teflon and cold iron, perhaps you do have something... delicious about you?
Niven's "Intent to Decieve" (Score:2)
Niven's "Intent to Decieve" is a short-story involving a fully-automated restaurant and what might happen to a customer who tries to leave through the kitchen when it's malfunctioning.
Tyson Bets On Robots... (Score:2)
... machine vision is now accurate and speedy enough to apply to meat production
In physics we have the spherical cow [briankoberlein.com]. So maybe to make things easier to process, Tyson is casting about looking for a normalized-sized triangular chicken?
Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
Any job that can be done by a machine should be done by a machine.
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Gravis Zero is secretly an advanced 'posting' AI at Google HQ. No need to worry; he'll be canceled at the next earnings release.
It's about time (Score:5, Funny)
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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The President signed an Executive Order giving the meat packing owners immunity from liability for anything related to COVID-19 so there won't be any major litigation. Having meat in the stores is more important than peoples' lives.
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The President signed an Executive Order giving the meat packing owners immunity from liability for anything related to COVID-19 so there won't be any major litigation. Having meat in the stores is more important than peoples' lives.
The president claimed that's what the order does, but it doesn't, because that's obviously not something an executive order can do. I also doubt he ever read it.
In addition, courts often consider compliance with OSHA standards and guidance as evidence in an employerâ(TM)s favor in litigation. Where a meat, pork, or poultry processing employer operating pursuant to the Presidentâ(TM)s invocation of the DPA has demonstrated good faith attempts to comply with the Joint Meat Processing Guidance and is sued for alleged workplace exposures, the Department of Labor will consider a request to participate in that litigation in support of the employerâ(TM)s compliance program. Likewise, the Department of Labor will consider similar requests by workers if their employer has not taken steps in good faith to follow the Joint Meat Processing Guidance. [dol.gov]
Not starving IS peoples' lives (Score:2)
The President signed an Executive Order giving the meat packing owners immunity from liability for anything related to COVID-19 so there won't be any major litigation. Having meat in the stores is more important than peoples' lives.
Having something to eat, rather than starving, IS peoples' lives.
Anyone who would have had a liability claim against a meat packer should instead make it against the government, on the theory that the liability immunity is a Fifth Amendment "taking" and not a tax, and therefore m
Re:Not starving IS peoples' lives - fixed repost. (Score:2)
The President signed an Executive Order giving the meat packing owners immunity from liability for anything related to COVID-19 so there won't be any major litigation. Having meat in the stores is more important than peoples' lives.
Having something to eat, rather than starving, IS peoples' lives.
Anyone who would have had a liability claim against a meat packer should instead make it against the government, on the theory that the liability immunity is a Fifth Amendment "taking" and not a tax, and therefore m
Fuck Tyson (Score:1)
Re: Fuck Tyson (Score:2)
They can't hire scans. Trump has blocked all legal immigration and illegals have turned away.
Europe is denying travel, next up so omeone will stop a lot traf r with us. As be we are to sick to trust.
Then the economy folds and the world goes on without us.
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Why don't you go and sign up to work for them if you feel so strongly about it?
The meat packing plants are some of the worst COVID-19 infection sites in the US and you're complaining about the workers demanding a safer workplace. The workers are dying because of their unsafe workplace and spreading the virus throughout the community. The POTUS has made them go back to work and given the plant owners immunity from liability. All so that you can have your steak or chicken wings like everything is normal.
Peopl
No! (Score:2)
No way! We can just forbid people to go to work, ban automation, and pass legislation that will make meat appear magically, to be bought by the magic stimulus dollars. Because that's how economics works!
Anyone who objects is just a hateuh. Probably racist too, somehow.