Schmid & Wezel (Maulbronn, Germany) offers equipment under the EFA brand for slaughtering and cutting for any slaughtering capacities. The aim of the machinery is to optimise the processing times and reduce the energy required from personnel but also correct and respectful treatment of living beings and handling of raw materials – all to produce high quality products from local meat.
The most sensitive area in the meat processing industry is the stunning of animals in a manner that is humane and correct. These days pigs and small animal species are stunned in artisanal businesses with electrical equipment to generate the starting product cost effectively and safely. The precise setting of the relevant and correct parameters can be adjusted by meat processors depending on the size and race of the animal to maximise flexibility and safety.
For many years cattle have been stunned using captive bolt pistols. The EFA offers a range of pistols for stunning calves to large stud bulls. The manufacturer offers the Cash knocker for halal slaughtering. The brain of the animal being slaughtered remains intact using the knocker but the animal is insensible.
If only small numbers of animals are slaughtered weekly, meat processors can use machines for combined applications such as the EFA SL50-18 or the EFA 63. Tasks such as debreasting, halving and quartering of any type of carcass can now be managed with just one machine.
If the meat processor produces larger quantities every hour, a fast and reliable machine is needed. Halving is done using the halving saw in the SB series. It provides a good cross-section and makes subsequent work more comfortable because the bone chips have already been rinsed off during the halving. The saws in the SB series can also be used with a more powerful motor in industrial slaughterhouses and are characterised by long service lives and minimal maintenance requirements.
Animals that need to be dehided before halving demand additional strength reserves from meat processors. In modern butcheries, cattle are dehided with the help of a skinning unit with prior dressing of the breast, legs and abdomen. To speed up and simplify these processes, the EFA offers various hand-guided dehiding tools that are intended for particular areas. Large and flat areas such as the abdomen and breast are processed with the vibration-less EFA 2000 which can be resharpened while on-line. The front and back legs are more difficult to dehide. The EFA 620 is suitable for this task because its special operating principle means that it is almost impossible to damage the hide, achieving greater profits when selling the hides. The demands for breaking are highly divergent. For breaking up mostly lamb and venison, the small unit weights mean that a single-hand saw such as the compressed air saw SK 16/8 D is adequate. If larger carcasses are broken up, the experienced meat processor turns to the more powerful machines such as the SK 18 WB and the EFA 63. The SK 18 WB has adjustable cutting depth for the circular saw blade so that a cutlet can be quickly and easily separated from the pig abdomen as well as other pieces. The EFA 63, which is equipped with a reciprocating saw, is used for cattle slaughtering and breaking and is predestined for quartering cattle halves and further processing. For businesses with high throughput, the manufacturer recommends robust machines such as the EFA 85 to EFA 186 circular saws which have IP protection class IP65 and more powerful motors.