Danielle Gould, Contributor Founder of Food+Tech Connect FO OD & D RINK | 11/14/2012 @ 4:18PM |563 views
Hacking a Better Future of Meat Comment Now Follow Comments
Mark your calendar! From December 7 – 9,Food+Tech Connect, GRACE Communications and Applegate are bringing together technologists, entrepreneurs, creatives, policy experts, non-profit leaders and industry executives for Hack//Meat, the first-ever “meat hackathon” in New York City. Over the course of the weekend, “steakholders” will work with teams to rapidly prototype innovative solutions to business and consumer education challenges in the way meat is produced, processed, distributed, sold and consumed. Our goal? We want to bring together the best and brightest minds to develop technologies and tools that help democratize meat. Some of the areas we will be tackling include: Production: Develop tools to help small and medium sized ranchers more efficiently and sustainably manage their herds, process their meat and sell direct to consumers or wholesale buyers. Health: Reimagine how technology can eliminate or minimize antibiotic use and improve animal health. Processing: Design ways for processors to more easily demonstrate that they are complying with federal regulations, manage processing demand and access financing.
Distribution: Streamline the process of selling “non-choice� cuts of meat, and improve the efficiency and financial viability of getting meat from farm to buyer. Foodservice: Make it easier and more affordable for restaurants and foodservice to source sustainable ingredients, as well as to manage supplier adherence to worker and animal welfare. Consumption: Improve consumer insight research and education on the benefits of sustainable meat and nose-to-tail cooking. Developers, designers, gamers, marketers, storytellers, academics, farmers, butchers, restaurateurs, policy experts and anyone who is in the business of meat is invited to participate. As always, you can be sure to expect great food, lots of learning and invaluable new connections. We also want to make sure teams are able to actualize your prototypes, so we’re offering cash prizes and consulting services to winning hacks. Visit the Hack//Meat website to learn more about the event and for updates on additional prizes and judges. You can register for the event here. Please email Danielle [at] foodtechconnect.com for more information about how you can get involved as an event sponsor. This post originally appeared on Food+Tech Connect.
December 7, 2012, 7:31 am
Bring On the Hacks (Meat Lovers Preferred) By EMMA BRYCE
Glazed pork chops, sizzling bacon, a gargantuan slab of spare ribs — increasingly, people are choosing to buy these succulent staples from sustainable meat farms instead of choosing industrially processed meat. The New York City Meat Hackathon is saluting this trend a three-day event, beginning today, where farmers, butchers, tech mavens, policymakers and entrepreneurs – all “steakholders” — will confer on potential improvements in the ways that livestock is farmed and meat is processed and consumed. Hack/Meat
It’s “hacking” in the creative sense, said Chris Hunt of the Grace Communications Foundation, one of the event’s sponsors. The goal, he said, is to deconstruct the challenge and come up with do-it-yourself solutions based on existing technology. (Hacking of the traditional variety will also be involved: a pigbutchering demo is part of the lineup at the event, to be held in the experimental workspace known as Grind at 419 Park Avenue South, near 29th Street.)
The annual food-themed hackathon, the third to be held in New York to date, invites participants including the general public to match their skill sets to specific challenges in the hope of inventing prototype tools or technologies. This is the first one devoted to meat; in previous years the focus was on food in general and then on using data visualization to explore the subject. The winning hack will receive both $2,500 to help make his or her solution a reality and expert guidance on promoting the idea. “There are big challenges that are faced by sustainable meat producers and sustainable meat consumers,” Mr. Hunt said. Sustainable meat is loosely characterized as meat from pasturedwelling animals that were not fed hormones or antibiotics. Rather than campaigning for reforms in the industrial meat industry, the organizers want to find strategies for bolstering the sustainable sector. Challenges include educating consumers on finding sustainably farmed goods, reading labels in supermarkets, and understanding the environmental impact of factory farms. The industrial meat sector, which relies on antibiotics to counter oftenunhygienic conditions, promotes the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which can make human illnesses harder to treat. And then there’s pollution, from methane emissions to industrial runoff. By the same token, sustainable producers have much to learn about labeling a chunk of meat to make its origins clearer. For consumers, “things like labels are very confusing,” Mr. Hunt said. Other themes include food safety, animal welfare and improving efficiency in the processing and production of sustainably farmed meat. “The industrial meat system has a very well established and sophisticated distribution network,” Mr. Hunt noted, which makes
its products more accessible and cheaper than the sustainable variety. That’s a challenge that one participant, the digital developer Will Turnage, is eager to pursue at the hackathon. He said that inventory management on sustainable farms is still an antiquated process. “A lot of slaughterhouses are still run by a guy with a pad and paper,” he said. “To me it’s really about improving the speed and the workflow.” Technology could help accomplish that. Mr. Turnage mentioned the potential for cellphone apps that could change the way inventories are updated. Organizers suggest that such efforts could ultimately influence the industrial meat sector to adopt more sustainable practices as well. “I think something like this hackathon helps to promote that sort of transition,” Mr. Hunt said. In addition to Grace, the event is sponsored by the media research group Food+Tech Connect and Applegate, the organic meat purveyor.
Hacking Meat: Using Technology To Even The Playing Field With Big Agriculture For small farms, going up against huge, automated competition can be daunting, even more so when you’re selling meat instead of just vegetables. But a recent hackathon created solutions for any farmer to get their meat to market easily and efficiently. A lot of independent food producers will tell you they like the idea of selling direct, but are put off by the legwork involved. Setting up shop at a farmer’s market or online isn’t just about rearing and growing, and putting things in a light-truck. There’s all sorts of back end stuff that needs to happen first--tasks that prevent farmers from doing what they should be doing, and put them at a disadvantage versus Big Agriculture, which industrialized and automated everything years ago. One of the purposes of Hack//Meat, a hackathon organized in New York recently, was to figure how to level the playing-field a little bit, giving farmers access to technology that smooths the process of getting produce to market, in as painless a way as possible. Teams put forward solutions in six categories, including food labeling and inventory management. The overall winning entry was CARV--an Internet-connected meat scale that captures data such as the cut and weight of a piece of meat, and where and when the animal was processed.
Currently, small producers often handle such data manually. They send an animal to be butchered, and back comes pieces of meat and a paper packing list. To comply with regulations, farmers need to report data to the USDA and Food Safety Inspection Service--a laborious process. CARV notes information at processing time, and ensures it doesn’t need to be re-entered down the line. It also improves transparency in the supply chain, so anybody, including retailers and customers, can see where their meat has come from. "We grew up on a farm and we help our parents market the meat, and this is the biggest challenge--the inventory," says Ulla Kjarval, who developed the CARV with her sister Melkorka, and a fellow "meat nerd" named Will Turnage. "It’s just really, really tedious, and so much work. If we could make it easier, we would be more profitable and the whole thing would be less frustrating."
We grew up on a farm and we help our parents market the meat, and this is the biggest challenge--the inventory.
"When we get the meat back from the processor, we just get a big box and you don’t really know what the weights are. We have to input all that into our inventory system. This helps us to be more efficient." The Kjarval family has a 400-acre farm in upstate New York, and the sisters also run a design business. Turnage has put together an Android-based app. But the team still needs to produce a prototype and collaborate more with processors and other farmers. One issue is whether CARV will be a wholly new scale, or something that can be retrofitted to existing equipment (hopefully the latter, says Kjarval). The first prize of $2,500--which comes with consulting assistance--will go towards development costs. The event showcased many good ideas. In second place came Slot for Slaught, a web tool that improves co-ordination between processors and producers. And in third was Meat--a Foursquare app that allows consumers to request items from independent producers at grocery stores. In addition, there were tools to improve traceability and bar-coding, and ways to educate and inform the public about farming issues. Oneintriguing scheme even aims to cut the amount of meat people eat. Foodpairing recommends alternatives based on "scientific flavor analysis." The hack brought together designers, developers, nonprofits, meat industry veterans, and many lay people concerned about the heinous industrialization of meat--and sounds like it was fun. "It was a really inspiring event," Kjarval says.