NARRATOR: Cold and
cut with precision-- they're the meat in our
sandwiches and slices of American pop culture. They're the source
of long-held secrets and the inspiration for
mile-high masterpieces. It's very good.
NARRATOR: Delectable-- Delicioso. NARRATOR: --and dodgy. This is pork tongue and pork
snout that has been cooked. NARRATOR: Pureed,
pumped, or poured-- now, cold cuts on
"Modern Marvels." [music playing] Cold cuts-- they're
cold, and they're cut. Whether at the sandwich shop
or deli counter, a picnic or a sporting event, cold cuts
are the ultimate in convenience food, and they've been that
way since they began arriving with European
immigrants in the 1800s. They've also become
extremely profitable. Every year, Americans consume
over $2 billion worth. And although dozens of different
cold cuts fill our sandwiches, a few stand out. Some have even become a part
of the American lexicon. Like this one. Farmland Foods in Wichita,
Kansas, is full of bologna. Every year, this plant squeezes
out 60 million pounds of it-- enough to make 960
million sandwiches. But what exactly have Americans
been putting in their lunch boxes for all these years? The answer rests in these
2,000-pound combo bins. I'm surrounded right here
by the meat ingredients that go into a bologna. Right here, we have
what they call 50 trim. That meat will be
50% lean, 50% fat and will go into this
particular combo. And over here we have
the pork trimmings. They'll take the trimmings
from the loin, from the ham. And this particular meat
will be 80% lean, 20% fat. The last thing we have, and the
more predominant in bologna, is the mechanically
separated chicken. NARRATOR: OK, we know
you're wondering. Mechanically separating
chicken is the process of removing the remaining meat
from the bones of an already butchered chicken. And it comprises 70% of bologna. Named after Bologna,
Italy, the town famous for mortadella and other
classic handmade sausages, American-style bologna is
made with a more modern touch. This is the beginning
of the process right here, where we start
taking big pieces of meat and making them into smaller
meat that we can use. They're spreading that meat out. They're inspecting it as
it goes down the belt. It goes underneath
this metal detector where, if there has been
any metal in the meat, it's detected and we
can take it out there. From there, it goes
into the grinder. NARRATOR: At the rate of
10,000 pounds an hour, the meat is ground
through a circular die. The smaller surface
area on the meat will better absorb
the goodies that make up the timeless
bologna flavor and texture. You'll see some salt.
You'll see some sugar. You'll see some corn starch. You'll see some
bologna seasoning here, which is mostly mustard. NARRATOR: Dump in a blender,
ooze in some corn syrup, and the ingredients are turned
into a gooey bologna paste. [thud] Once the product is blended,
it's put into this hopper. It's then run through this
vacuumizer, where all the air is taken out the product. Then it runs through
this last cutter, where it's emulsified and
put into this last hopper, ready to stuff. NARRATOR: The emulsified
mixture makes its final push into thermoplastic
cellulose casings. Once the 36-pound logs are
spit out of the casing machine, they're clipped and
sealed for cooking. The bologna logs are then
wheeled to the hothouse and smoked for eight
hours until they reach an internal temperature
of 165 degrees Fahrenheit. After a chill down
in the cooler, it's off to the slicers. [thudding] At the rate of 920
slices per minute, the bologna is portioned
into 16-ounce piles and sent down the
line for packaging. But the final bit of work
is left for the consumer. As you know, this
particular product is stuffed in a red casing. This casing is inedible. It's put into a package
this way mainly for show, so it looks good in the case. But what you would do
before you actually ate it is you would
take that casing, peel it away from the meat, so
that all you really are eating is bologna. NARRATOR: The main ingredient
for the iconic American sandwich is ready for delivery. And there's no telling
where it might end up and how it will be used. Elvis Presley was a
huge sandwich eater. One of his favorites was
fried bologna sandwich, which is still very
popular down South. You fry the bologna in a pan,
and then you put in the bread, and then you fry the bread too. More butter the better. NARRATOR: Well before Elvis tore
into his first fried bologna sandwich, Julius
Caesar and his armies were chomping down on
another cold cut classic-- salami. [thud] Legend has it the
first salamis were made in 700 BC in Salamis,
a small village on the coast of the island of Cyprus. Derived from the Latin
word "sal," meaning salt, salami originated as a way to
preserve meat during a time without refrigeration. And those who made it were
hailed for their expertise. I think salami, more so than
perhaps any other cold cut, really is an artisan food. Really, the craftsmanship
that goes into it is amazing. NARRATOR: At the Columbus
Salami Company in San Francisco, California, Francois
Vecchio creates Genoa salami with the same passion and
recipe as the ancient sausage makers from Genoa, Italy. Here you have a sample
of the kind of meat that we receive
from the Midwest. The meat needs to be red. We even get whole muscle,
which are completely peeled, as you see. In the salami, you want to
respect that meat all the way through and add to it the little
particle of fat that will give you that nutty taste,
that will give you the texture and the
proper balance of flavor in between the lean and the fat. NARRATOR: Shoulder meat and
the fat from the back of a pig are chopped to size and
mixed into the proper secret proportions. Now, here you see the fat
coming into the bowl chopper with a little bit of lean. Meantime, the operator
has put in the meat the starter culture. Now he's putting in the salt
and the other ingredients, essentially salt,
sugar, some spice. This is burgundy wine that
is part of the formulation. The process goes on without
emulsification at low speed to respect the
texture of the meat. NARRATOR: Once the salami
reaches the right consistency, it's sent to the blender,
where it's turned into a paste. Through the blending
effect, the mixing, the salt, which is in contact with
the protein of the meat, will form a glue that will
bind the paste together. Also, we'll bring
the lid down so that we can vacuum whatever air
is still included in the paste. NARRATOR: Removing
the air from the paste keeps any unwanted bacteria
from growing in the meat-- a critical step for
the next phase-- fermentation, the process where
beneficial microorganisms work to preserve and cure the meat. Once in its casing, the
outside of the salamis get a kickstart into
the fermentation process with a dousing of penicillium. When the salami comes
through that little tunnel, you see that sprinkling. The salami gets coated with the
starter culture for the mold. It's all wet outside. The mold is necessary
in the process once we go into
the fermentation. Here we have a wagon of
Genoa salami ready to go to the fermenting room. NARRATOR: The salami is
warmed inside this 75 degree dripping room. The fermentation
process is underway-- a critical step for the
meat to become salami. Remember that starter
culture added to the meat? Inside the salami, the starter
culture starts to multiply. Billions of microscopic
bacteria consume the meat's natural sugar particles,
turning them into lactic acid. The lactic acid coagulates
the meat proteins into solids. As the meat dries, the
bacteria begin to die off. At the same time,
the penicillium mold is attacking from the outside. The mold penetrates
the casing, acting as a biological
catalyst, releasing flavor and aromatic enzymes
that give the salami its distinctive taste. Meanwhile, as moisture
continues to evaporate, the sausage loses
about 5% of its weight. By the fifth day,
it looks like this. We are getting to the end. Normally, it takes
seven days to dry. In this case, the
salami's fully formed. The mold has grown everywhere. And if I cut it,
voila, I have a salami. The slice holds. It's not ready,
but it's delicious. NARRATOR: For those who
like their meat even firmer, the salami heads for the
aging room, where it will hang for up to three months. Once it's dried,
it's ready to eat. The salami has reached
its full flavor potential, but left alone, it would
continue to dry and lose that Genoa salami taste. So after the mold is
peeled off, the salami is sliced and then sealed. Columbus Genoa salami
is now ready for market. They even make the most
expensive type of salami here. It's called Felino, and
it runs about $15 a pound. If you like salami, you might
like the classic cold cut that rhymes with, pastrami. At the world-famous Carnegie
Deli in New York City, these mouthwatering masterworks
have been luring patrons since 1937. The signature sign that's
been with us for 70 years. This is a landmark, a trademark. It says, "The world's best." We have the world's
best pastrami right here in New York. NARRATOR: Every week,
Carnegie customers devour more than 10,000
pounds of the stuff. To make this product
is very, very hard and very time consuming. It takes us 14
days from the time that we get the meat till we
process the meat till we serve it. NARRATOR: And that starts at
the Carnegie processing plant in New Jersey, where every day
so-called steer navels arrive to be turned into pastrami. This is where the Carnegie
Deli pastrami sandwich starts, right in this room
right over here. As you can see, these navels
are very heavily marbled. The marbling means that
they're either prime or choice. If we had a lean pastrami,
we wouldn't have any flavor. Fat is where the flavor is. We all know that. This navel comes from the
section from the fourth rib down, all the way down
past its belly button. The navel, as you
can see, almost looks like a piece of bacon. That's because we
call it steer bacon. NARRATOR: The navels
start their journey in the injection room,
where 54 needles deliver a dose of brine. This is called a
stitch pump machine, and that's really
basically what it's doing. It's stitch pumping through the
needles the brine that we make. The brine contains water, salt,
and all the special spices that make our Carnegie Deli
pastrami what it is. The brine preserves the
meat and the red color. You get a nice rosy red color. The same as they treat bacon. If you look closely
at the navels, you'll see all the
needle marks that have gone through the meat. NARRATOR: The brine-filled
navels are then sent to recover in a steel tub. For the next two
or three days, they absorb the brine and
spices until it's time for a special Carnegie
Deli spice massage. All right, this is where
the magic happens right here. We've already drained the navels
that you saw in the holding tanks in the other room,
and now we rub them with all our secret spices that we use. That includes coriander,
peppercorn, paprika, and caramel color, and then
there's a few in there I'm just going to keep to myself. NARRATOR: With
their spice coat on, the navels are hung and sent
to the smokers, where they're cooked with the aroma
of hickory wood. Other manufacturers
boil their navels. Four hours later, the navels
have graduated to pastrami. Take a little cut off of here. Got all the fat. We got all the marbling. This really looks like a
nice prime piece of meat. Ah, the smell. We're going to let it
go to Carnegie Deli. NARRATOR: Cooled and
created, the pastrami is off to the deli, where
it gets one last pampering in a nice, long steam bath. Once the meat comes in,
we bring it and we put it into the steam table. Here in the steam table,
we cook it for two to two and a half hours to bring
all the flavor and the moisture out. And it breaks down
the fiber, and we get a product nice and soft and
tender, ready to go upstairs, make sandwiches, and to eat it. NARRATOR: Upstairs, people
from around the world are digging in on the
time-honored recipe brought over by European Jews
in the mid-1800s. Finishing a sandwich,
however, is another thing. SANFORD LEVINE: Every
sandwich that comes out is at least a pound of meat. We don't want our
customers to finish. If they finish,
we made a mistake. And if they can open their mouth
and put their mouth around it, it's a mistake. NARRATOR: As the tenderized
masterpiece makes its final approach, it's held
up with care and tradition all the way to another
delighted customer. Look at that smile. All the way from Minnesota, I
put a smile on that man's face. NARRATOR: Speaking of faces,
how about a cold cut made out of a pig face-- or head, to be exact? Bologna, salami, and pastrami
may be the classic cold cuts known to everyone, but now it's
time for some more challenging compositions. Fritz Usinger is a
fourth-generation sausage maker. In 1880, his
great-grandfather Fred immigrated to the United States
and settled in Milwaukee, where he opened Usinger's
Sausage Company. With him came his
favorite European cold cut recipes, including some on the
exotic side, like head cheese. To the squeamish,
a quick heads-up. There's nothing cheesy about it. These are the meats
that have been prepared that are going to go into
the batch of head cheese. The ingredients are meats that
come from the head of the hog, that is, pork tongue and pork
snout that has been cooked. It's been cubed. And then it's going to
be mixed with spices. NARRATOR: Head cheese
has a loyal following among hardcore cold cut lovers,
one with its roots planted deep in the family farm. And historically, head
cheese was a product that was developed generations
ago when people raised their own animals on the
farm to feed their family. The beauty of head cheese
is that it makes use of all of the meats from the animal. Head cheese was very much a
poor man's meal, because it was the bits and parts that were
less expensive that could be salvaged. So it was economical. You used up all kinds of
little scraps and bits that were remaining, but yet
kind of had that little nod to the wonderful feasting
heads that were presented at the nobility table. NARRATOR: In the hands
of a capable butcher, the usable parts of the
head are easily removed with some precision slicing. Separating meat from bone
takes some digging around. But in the end,
nothing is wasted. Cook in boiling
water, add some salt, and it's ready for processing. It's hoisted into a
mixer for seasoning. We're adding salt
to the mix right now. Natural spices are added to
the broth and the cubed pork. And we'll get a nice,
even blend of the spices with the cubes of meat. Once it's been thoroughly
mixed, the mixer will be emptied and the cubed meat will
go to the filling station. NARRATOR: The spiced
head meat is then drawn into a natural casing
made from beef intestine. But its chunky composition
makes for a clunky tie-off, so the sausages are hand-tied
the old fashioned way. They're now headed for a bath. In this room, in
these large vats, we water-cook the head cheese. We cook it at a water
temperature of 200 degrees for approximately two hours
until an internal temperature of 160 degrees has been reached. At that point, we start chilling
the head cheese in cold water. And after an internal
temperature of 40 degrees has been reached,
then the head cheese will then go to the cooler
for further air chilling. NARRATOR: As it cools,
the broth solidifies into a jelly around the meat. The pig head parts are now a
mosaic of Usinger and cold cut history. Fritz Usinger says it's called
head cheese because it's molded like cheese and its shape
resembles a wheel of cheese. Those who belly up say
the taste is rather-- complex. So it is a chewier
product, and it has more mouth feel than a
normal emulsified cold cut. NARRATOR: For something
a little smoother, there's always the centuries-old
German creation, liverwurst. Liver has always
been a rich man's food. The origins of liverwurst
are back to the nobility. There's only a little tiny
liver in every animal, and it's prized. It was always eating
first when it was fresh. NARRATOR: At Usinger's, the
livers are always fresh-- thousands of them, just waiting
to be added to some pork and then ground into a paste. The pork livers and ground
pork have been combined with the spices and
the salt. Now they're going to go through
the emulsifier machine, and we're going to puree
the ground pork and ground liver to make an emulsion. NARRATOR: Emulsified
liver and pork is dripping with vitamins,
minerals, protein, iron, and a bit of cholesterol. Put it in a casing, and
the livers are a wurst. The emulsion is
pumped into the casings under vacuum to avoid any
air voids in the product. The sausages are
in 3-pound sticks, and they'll be water cooked to
an internal temperature of 160 degrees, and then
rapidly chilled. NARRATOR: The liver's
moisture makes it soft. Aficionados use it either
cut thick or as a spread. For those who want something
a little less exotic, there's always this classic-- olive loaf. It starts gently enough
with lean beef, ground pork, and a touch of flour. To those meats, we add ice. And the ice keeps the
meat cold during chopping. The knives during chopping
create a lot of friction. We don't want the meat
emulsion's temperature to rise too high. Therefore, we add ice. NARRATOR: Round
and round it goes. When it stops, it looks
a lot like bologna. The meat went in ground. And now through
the bowl cutter, it has been made into an
emulsion, or a batter. So the meat is very soft
and almost cake-like. NARRATOR: A proper olive loaf is
crafted as much for aesthetics as it is taste. To add both, Manzanilla
olives are delicately folded into the mix. We're running the
machine slow right now so that the olives
don't get cut up. We want the olives
in whole pieces so that the olive loaf has a
very nice picture when it's sliced, so we get a nice
distribution of whole olives within that slice. NARRATOR: Here the
blend takes a diversion from traditional cold cuts. This is where the
loaf part comes in. Olive loaves are really
made like meatloaf. What we're doing is we're
stuffing them into a meatloaf pan. And then we're going to
oven bake the olive loaf to an internal
temperature of 160. NARRATOR: After a nice
browning in the oven, the olives, pimentos, and
meat have risen to complete another Usinger favorite. Ordinary or exotic, round or
square, cold cuts manufacturers have crafted something
for everyone. But now that we have the
cold, it's time for the cuts. Be careful. --sharp it is. I mean-- ow! It's cut. NARRATOR: At the nearly
5,000 Quiznos Sub shops across America, cold
cuts are turned into warm cuts. Every year, 13 million
pounds of turkey and 5 million pounds
of ham are sent through the distinctive
Quiznos toasters. But equally important
to Quiznos' success is the hard-working hero
moving back and forth behind the counter-- the slicer. There's no cold cut
without the cut. We call it "thin to win." That's our saying. You know, we want to
have nice, thin slices. You take your thumb and your
fingers and you rub slightly, and it just starts to break up. But as you can see here,
we have whole slices. And that's important for the
consistency of the sandwich. NARRATOR: Quiznos' slicers come
from the Hobart Slicer Plant in Richmond Hill, Georgia. Every year, Hobart assembles and
ships several thousand slicers to delis around the world. Manufacturing begins when
aluminum slicer bases enter the polishing area. This is where we start the
polish process of the castings. NARRATOR: The backbreaking
work required to polish out the rough surfaces is necessary
to reduce any harborage areas for bacteria. 80-grit belts and fine
sand-coated wheels smooth out most of
the visible crevices. For the hard-to-reach areas,
the base tumbles around in a bed of steel beads. Now, what happens in a
burnishing is these millions of bearings in here hit
the surface on the base and makes it even
a smoother process, makes it a smoother finish. NARRATOR: The base is then
sent through a protective oxide spray and put aside
to wait for assembly. In another section of the plant,
the rest of the slicer parts are fit together with as view
seams and joints as possible-- more protection
against bacteria. But the star part, the blade,
is getting its own polishing in a separate area of the plant. It starts as a 3/8 inch
thick piece of sheet metal. A diamond cutting
wheel makes it a knife. Next step in the process
of making the knife is sharpening the edge. So after it comes from
flapping and machining, Tina loads it into the
sharpening machine. And this sharpening machine
will take the edge down to about 10/1,000 of an inch. So it's not quite as
sharp as we want it, but nevertheless it
gets it ready to go on the final product. NARRATOR: Add on
the protective blade guard, and the slicer
is almost complete. Once the 1/2 horsepower motor's
in place, all that's left is some fine tuning. You can see Joe, that he's
already assembled the knife, and he's adjusted
the gauge plate. And the next part that goes on
the machine is this top cover. Once the top cover is done,
he will also put the sharpener on it. NARRATOR: The Hobart
sharpening stone is made of cubic boron nitride,
one of the hardest materials known to man. This is basically
guaranteed to work for the life of the slicer. It will go on until the slicer
is done, the blade is worn out. NARRATOR: Before they have a
chance to wear out in the deli, randomly selected parts
are tested in a lab to determine their lifecycle. This process here simulates
reasonably excessive application and the
use of the switches. So we're trying to put it
through some vigorous testing here. At this time, these switches
have been run for 1,115,000 cycles, and we intend to take
that up for several million. NARRATOR: But before any
slicer leaves the plant, it has to pass the scrutiny
of Big Tim Griffin. I'll test the sharpness of the
knife with these Post-it tabs. When I run the carriage
across the knife, I want two out of three
of the tabs to fall off. That's a good one. [inaudible] spacing. NARRATOR: Of course, when
the slicer goes into action, it will have to be cleaned
around its sharp edges. To make this safe
and easy, Hobart has developed a solution. We use this tool to remove
the knife from the machine, like so. And the knife comes up. In it, the edge of the knife
is protected by this tool, and the blade does not come off. It's secured in there. And this knife now can go
to a sink to get cleaned or to a dishwasher. NARRATOR: Hobart owes
a nod of recognition to butcher and novice
engineer Wilhelmus van Berkel. In 1898, van Berkel took
a blade and mounted it next to a moving carriage. By 1907, his
patented slicers were being used around the world. Emilio Mitidieri is passionate
for the old Berkels. He restores them in
his San Francisco shop. I am so baffled how
they really put together these machines and
how they moved. NARRATOR: They moved
with elegant simplicity. Many collectors consider
them works of art. This is a Model 3 Berkel from
1905, maybe 1907, more or less. And you could see that the big
wheel moves the small wheel and moves the carrier
like a bicycle. NARRATOR: Van Berkel's
design is ingenious. Once the meat is positioned on
the carrier next to the blade, the operator turns the wheel. The wheel turns a set of gears
that move a handle attached to the carriage. At the same time, a
second set of gears turns a shaft attached
to a chain, which turns the blade as the
carriage moves back and forth. Van Berkel's idea to move the
carriage instead of the blade is the same design used today. The sharpener is also the
model for modern slicers. Gently, you move it up there. One or two, three
passes, gently. And it's done. At that point, you could feel
the blade how really sharp it is. I mean-- ow! It's cut. NARRATOR: Yep, the
sharpener works. CAMERAMAN: You OK?
- I'm OK. I've done this before. NARRATOR: Berkel knew his
customers wanted options. A thick or thin cut was just
a turn of the knob away. So here is this
classic cut, soppressata, that needs to be cut thin. And at this point,
you can see there that it's getting
really close to do it. And here we are. I want you to see it,
how translucent it is and how beautiful it is. Mm, delicious. Delicioso. NARRATOR: The Berkel may
have been poetry in motion, but breaking it down to
clean was cumbersome. In the 1950s, manufacturers
came up with a way to prevent the slicer
from becoming the slicee. The carrier that holds
the meat, it was removable. So that was fantastic because
you were able to put them in a dishwasher
or wash it by hand and able to put it back as
easy as I put it on there. There you go, and
you're ready to go. NARRATOR: The 1950s also brought
a new demand for convenience. In the 1950s, then, motors
were applied to these machines so you didn't have
to crank anymore. All you had to do, really,
was turn the switch on. NARRATOR: The motor may have
been the death of the slicer as performance art. But who's making sure there's
nothing alive in your turkey sandwich? That is an art in itself. Every year at the Butterball
Plant in Mount Olive, North Carolina, 3,000
employees process 12 to 15 million turkeys-- over 50,000 a day-- into one of America's
favorite cold cuts. And it starts with,
well, turkeys. Making cold cuts on
such a grand scale requires meticulous
attention to sanitation. Our top priority
is food safety. If you look at all the different
procedures that we go through, all of them have to be perfect. You only have one
opportunity to be perfect. NARRATOR: The quest
for perfection begins the moment
employees arrive at work. Before every shift, they must
don freshly laundered smocks and sanitize their hands to
reduce the risk of transporting bacteria into the plant. This is where
the process begins. NARRATOR: It begins with a
pass through the boot scrubber. Only then can workers
proceed to their stations. We're now in the
raw area of the plant. What's behind me right
now is our shackle line. At this point in time,
what you're seeing are turkeys that are coming down
the shackle line that have been run through the basic
processing area, or the area of evisceration. And they're now
being transported into our de-bone
area for cut up. NARRATOR: The turkey carcasses
are carved into sections. Breasts head down
the final trim line. We'll remove any
connective tissue, blood, or bruising from the wing
joint area of the breast lobe. We then use a process
called peeler rollers. You simply roll the breast
lobe on the rollers. That helps remove
any excess fat, skin, and, again, break up any
connective tissue that might cause toughness
in the product later on during consumption. The breast lobe then continues
to travel down the line to the final trim station. As you can see here, this lady
has removed the breast lobe from the line, and she'll begin
the process of final trim. NARRATOR: At final trim,
excess fat, bone, cartilage, and any blood material
is removed and discarded. It may look like a mess now, but
every night the final trim line empties, and the
sanitation crew trots in. At midnight tonight,
this will be a ghost town. From 12:00 to 6:30
the next morning, all this equipment that you
see will be broken down. Our sanitation crew will
come in, apply chemicals, hand scrub, rinse, sanitize. And within a six-hour
period, this equipment will be reinspected and
reassembled for production to begin the next day. NARRATOR: Why such an effort? To guard against
two main bacteria-- listeria, a nasty organism
that attacks the immune system, and salmonella, the
stomach-wrenching organism found in many animals. Moving on, the freshly carved
breasts are weighed and then sent to the injector, where
the watchful eye of the United States Department of
Agriculture is never far away. When I do my
inspection in here, I look for temperature
of the meat coming from the coolers in here. I verify that the brine is
at the right temperature. I verify that they have
the right ingredients. NARRATOR: Similar
to making pastrami, the needles inject a brine
solution of salt, water, and phosphate to create
moisture retention, and sweeteners like sugar
or honey for flavor. The turkeys are then vacuumed
through a plastic tube to a stainless steel massager. Inside the massager, the turkeys
tumble for about three hours. As they band along,
the brine is evenly distributed through the meat. Simultaneously, the salt draws
the meat's natural proteins to the outer surface. As you can see, they
meat has a very tacky, a very sticky look to
it, a waxy appearance. That's what you look for. That tackiness is a sign
that you've done a good job in extracting protein,
again, through vacuum and through mechanical
action of massage. NARRATOR: The sticky breasts
are then weighed to spec and placed two to four at a
time inside a plastic pocket. During cooking, the
extracted proteins will bind together to
form one super breast. The breasts are nested
in cook-in bags, then racked and
sent to the oven. When they emerge,
they will enter the segregated ready-cook
side of the plant. The important thing about the
separation between the raw side of the facility and the
cooked side of the facility is cross contamination. It's a good
manufacturing practice that the company split
the two areas to avoid the transit of food contaminants
from one area to another. NARRATOR: Getting to the cooked
side means a change of smocks. Employees and camera
crews must then wade through a soap
and water filled basin. An iodine solution kills
bacteria on the hands. Arm-length plastic gloves
complete the ensemble. It's now safe to
rejoin the bagged birds on this side of the plant. And then we have associates
begin to unload the product from the belt, which is the
first step in the process of removal of the cooking
bag from the product. The product travels
by way of conveyor into the cooking
bag removal area. Here, we have our
associates using a knife to score the plastic to
begin the removal process. Then they remove the cooking
bag from the product. NARRATOR: As the
cooked turkey breasts are freed from their
bags, the knives are periodically sacrificed
in the spirit of sanitation. Each morning, these
knives are set out new. And at break time, they'll
actually dispose of that knife and begin to use a new knife
when they come back from break. That way, we don't carry
any contamination over from one period of
production to the next. NARRATOR: The
breasts are showered with either a liquid
hickory or caramel flavoring and then conveyed through
a wall to packaging. Humans take a different route,
and another preventative step against bacteria awaits. We're walking into the
vacuum packaging room. You'll notice on doorways,
the transition from one area of the plant to the next,
or one room to the next, we have door foam,
where we're laying down a layer of quat sanitizer
to help create segregation from one room to the next. NARRATOR: Meanwhile, the cooked
breasts have been vacuum sealed and are about to enter
the shrink tunnel. The product moves into
hot water shrink tunnel. Water temperature ranges
from 195 to 205 degrees. During this process, the bag
is shrunk down to the product, so you get a nice, tight,
snug fit of the product. Product is then loaded
into a surface pasteurizer. NARRATOR: Inside the
surface pasteurizer, the breasts move through
hot and then cold water. When they come out,
they're free of bacteria. The factory is a
different place at night and the haunt of the
sanitation police. It's 4:00 in the morning,
and the entire production floor that would be normally
running food product has been disassembled. The sanitation crew has come in. They've done a soap
and water rinse, and then they've sanitized it. So as you see here, she's
got a high-intensity light, and she's using her hands
to rub across the equipment. What she's looking
for is she's looking for oil residue or any
type of build-up of oil from production or from food. NARRATOR: Swabs are randomly
taken from equipment. Some are sent to an
on-site lab, where they're checked for listeria. Others go to a second lab and
are checked for salmonella. If these bacteria are spotted,
may they rest in peace, because the line will shut down
until every last microscopic organism has been destroyed. The turkey breasts will
find their way to the delis and sandwich shops of America. There, a visit to the slicer
turns them into cold cuts. Talking turkey, there's
another cold cut slicing into the
competition-- one of the strangest concoctions
in the deli counter. Can you say Tofurky? It's a cold cut
without the meat. For a quarter century, the
Turtle Island Food Company in Hood River, Oregon, has
been cooking up loaves of tofu and seasoning them to
taste like cold cuts. But it's the Tofurky, turkey
made from tofu, that's turned Turtle Island into an
$11 million a year tofu empire. Turtle Island produces 1.2
million pounds of Tofurky every year, and it owes its
success to tiny soybeans that have been cooked,
pressed into milk, and coagulated into
cake-like blocks called tofu. And that's how it
arrives at Turtle Island. The first step is to
turn it into a liquid. Here is the wonderful
magic ingredient of Tofurky, the tofu, which is
blended and liquefied, and ready to be pumped down
into the Tofurky mixture with our expeller-pressed
canola oil and our non-genetically-modified
soy sauce. NARRATOR: Downstairs,
the liquid ingredients are combined with spring
water from nearby Mount Hood and with the dry ingredient
that will solidify everything into a gel-- wheat gluten. Now, for the taste part,
or at least as much as Turtle Island is
ready to reveal. We also have the
colonel's secret recipe. The ingredients are
spices and plant extracts and proprietary stuff that
we can't tell you on camera. Last but not least
is the lemon juice, which acidifies the Tofurky
and lowers the pH level of it. NARRATOR: After
blending, the mixture becomes a kind of tofu goo. This is very
Jello-like, in a sense. It's like a gel at this point. It's very smooth in texture. You can see around
the sides here how smooth that is and shiny. It's very pretty. And then on the inside
when you tear it, it's starting to strand. At this point, the Tofurky
will take no shape. It will just take the shape of
whatever it's squeezed into. NARRATOR: That would be
a round plastic casing. Wheel it into the oven until
it's cooked, into the chiller to solidify, and then it's
time for a quick inspection. We're checking to
see if it's done. It's cooked all the way through. And it tears apart very
easily into these nice chunks right there. And it's very good to eat. Yeah, this is
delicious right now. Very good. NARRATOR: As-is, this is
the famous Tofurky loaf that changed the way
vegetarians enjoy Thanksgiving. For cold cuts, it's a quick
pass through the slicer and into a
vacuum-sealed package. Turtle Island claims Tofurky
delivers the same amount of protein as Turkey but with
less fat and no cholesterol. After it exits the heat tunnel,
there's a quick temperature check. And another batch
of healthy Tofurky is ready to leave the plant and
head for the supermarket deli section. There, it will join the products
of several traditional cold cut manufacturers who are also
getting into the health food game. Products like near fat-free
chicken and turkey bolognas, turkey salami, vegetarian
soy-based alternatives, and even artificially
flavored spray-on cold cuts are finding room on
supermarket and deli shelves. But most prefer biting
into the real thing. Still, whatever you
choose, vegetarian or meat, fermented, compressed, or
congealed, sliced thick, or sliced thin-- Very good. NARRATOR: --cold cuts are
sure to have a permanent place at the table as America's
ultimate sandwich filler.
