Clean Cuts: Can We Improve Cleaning at Packing Plants? 🎙️
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This article written by Dr. Reynold Bergen, the BCRC’s Science Director, originally appeared in the July 2026 issue of Canadian Cattlemen magazine and is reprinted on BeefResearch.ca with permission of the publisher.
Microbes are everywhere, all the time. Your body contains around 30 trillion human cells, and even more microbial cells. The breath you just took probably inhaled a few microbes—more than a few if you’re around other people, pets or livestock. That means microbes are circulating in packing plants, too. Most microbes are harmless, but some can shorten the shelf-life of beef, and a few (like Shiga-toxin producing E. coli or STEC) can cause food poisoning.
Beef is an excellent nutrient source for people. It’s also an excellent nutrient source for microbes. If microbes establish themselves on conveyor belts and other processing equipment, they have a ready food source to support their growth. As a result, Canadian packing plants work very, very hard to keep their facilities clean and their beef products safe. Facilities are cleaned after each shift. They start by scraping away visible contamination, then pressure washing the conveyor belts, equipment and floors (Step 1). In Step 2, a detergent is applied to break down fat residues, then rinsed off. Finally, a sanitizer is applied to kill microbes that may not have been washed off (Step 3).
Dr. Xianqin Yang of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s (AAFC) Lacombe research station and co-workers studied how microbial numbers change through the three-step cleaning process (Effects of Sanitation Practices on Microbial Dynamics in Meat Processing Environment).
What They Did
In collaboration with a major beef packing plant, the team collected samples from conveyor belts, floor drains and air before cleaning started, after Step 1 (pressure washing), after Step 2 (detergent) and after Step 3 (sanitizing). Bacteria were counted and identified in each sample.
What They Learned
At all time points, there were fewer bacteria in the air and conveyor belt samples than from the drain samples. This makes sense—gravity leads wash water and bacteria to the drain.
Bacterial numbers changed as cleaning progressed through Steps 1 through 3, but not in the way you might expect. Bacterial numbers in the drain samples were high before cleaning started and after the initial scraping and power-washing step. This isn’t surprising—large numbers of bacteria from the equipment and floor were being washed down the drain. But bacterial numbers on the conveyor belts were higher after Step 1 than before cleaning started! The same thing happened with bacterial numbers in the air samples after Step 1. This helps explain what happened. Anyone who’s ever used a pressure washer (or put their thumb over the end of a hose) to clean anything knows that water pressure loosens and removes stuck-on grime and dirt. But it also creates mist. That mist isn’t just water; it also carries fine particles of grime, dirt and—you guessed it—bacteria. The pressure-washing step dislodged some bacteria from the belts and drains and launched it into the air. The equipment undoubtedly looked cleaner after Step 1, but as the mist settled, bacteria from the air re-contaminated the conveyor belts. Thankfully, bacterial numbers dropped back to pre-cleaning levels after the detergent had been applied and rinsed off (Step 2) and remained low after the sanitizer was applied (Step 3).
The good news is that the cleaning steps were most effective against bacteria (like Pseudomonas and Acinetobacter) which can cause spoilage and shorten the shelf-life of packaged beef. Most importantly, numbers of E. coli on the conveyor belts dropped continuously as cleaning progressed through Steps 1 to 3. In fact, a lot of conveyor belt samples didn’t contain any E. coli at all, and it wasn’t found in any of the air samples. Further, fewer than half of the floor drain samples contained E. coli. This included all E. coli, not just the Shiga-toxin producing E. coli (STEC) that pose a human health concern. There are hundreds of strains of E. coli; STEC would have been a very small fraction of the very few E. coli they found here.
What Does This Mean To You?
Canadian beef packers clean their plants very effectively. Food safety records support this. In 2025, there were 263 food recalls in Canada. Six of these recalls (2.3%) involved beef, and only two (0.8%) were for microbial contamination. These were both STEC, but neither was associated with human illness, and both implicated a grocery store, not a beef packing plant.
Future research may be able to develop improved methods of pressure washing that minimize the numbers of microbes that enter the air and land on the equipment again. But this is very risky research for commercial packers to do—they are hesitant to experiment with new cleaning methods until they’re confident that they won’t accidentally make things worse. That sort of research, development and demonstration work needs to be done in a pilot-scale research facility before industry will adopt it.
Bottom Line
Dr. Yang was relocated to the Lethbridge research station to continue her microbiology research when AAFC made it research cuts in January. We’re grateful that AAFC recognized the importance of the work she does. But the Lacombe research abattoir is currently slated to close. That will make it extremely difficult for any potential new food safety knowledge coming out of her lab to turn into commercial practices that make Canadian beef—and its consumers—safer.
The Beef Cattle Research Council is a not-for-profit industry organization funded by the Canadian Beef Cattle Check-Off. The BCRC partners with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, provincial beef industry groups and governments to advance research and technology transfer supporting the Canadian beef industry’s vision to be recognized as a preferred supplier of healthy, high-quality beef, cattle, and genetics. Learn more about the BCRC at www.beefresearch.ca.
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