Cargill Meat Solutions has plans to install video cameras and software components to facilitate remote video auditing technology in the company's four turkey operations later this year.

However, plans to incorporate the technology in poultry operations may pose different challenges to the work being done in red-meat processing plants.

In a March 26 presentation at the American Meat Institute's Animal Care & Handling Conference, Dr. Mike Siemens, Cargill's director of animal welfare and husbandry, shared some of the lessons the company has learned since installing the hardware and software to allow for third-party, remote auditing of its animal welfare practices. Looking forward, the lessons reaped in implementing the system may not apply when the time comes to install similar systems at its poultry operations.

"We're very fortunate on the red-meat side because we have the A.M.I. (Animal Handling) guidelines," Dr. Siemens said. Applying the technology to its turkey slaughtering operations will be "a little more of an evolutionary process," he said, as there are poultry-specific guidelines to follow, but the company does not have as much experience in terms of camera placement and what the auditing benchmarks should be. "Our turkey division will be later in the year," he said, adding that minor hiccups in the implementation should not come as a surprise.

In March 2009, Cargill announced plans to incorporate the R.V.A. system in the slaughtering areas of its 10 North America-based beef plants using a web-based system of software and remote auditing services from Mt. Kisco, N.Y.-based Arrowsight, Inc. The company then plans to incorporate the technology at its pork slaughtering plants, which Dr. Siemens said should not require as much installation time.

The installation at the turkey operations, however, may require extra time, as the company is "kind of plowing newer ground on the turkey side," said Dr. Siemens, adding the company will consult with auditing and handling experts and possibly customers to ensure the system exceeds their expectations.

In terms of return on investment, Dr. Siemens said remote video auditing of Cargill's animal-welfare practices is not an investment that can be easily quantified, rather it is an investment in its brand protection. The technology is more like an insurance policy someone might have on their car in case of a wreck, he said. "We don't want to have to cash in this insurance policy. We want to have this insurance policy to make sure we don't have any wrecks," he concluded.