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Committed to operational excellence: fortifying a job site with a myriad of high-tech bells and whistles is only one tool that defines a quality work program. Nothing beats people power, however, which is an essential aspect of Excel Corp.''s meat manufacture stratetgy.

Article Excerpt
Jose Rojo knows the importance of food safety. The beef he helps produce at Excel Corp.'s Schuyler, NE, plant is the beef he feeds to his family. Moreover, as a 22-year-old man with a wife and 9month-old daughter, Rojo also knows the overall impact of food safety on meat protein consumption. Not only that, he knows what must be done to ensure the meat he has a hand in producing daily leaves the building in the best shape possible. It's his life's work.

Rojo, who joined the plant production team at Excel's beef processing facility three years ago after graduating from Schuyler High School, is part of a team working on a test-and-hold program for possible E. coli O157:H7 in ground beef. Dubbed the "Laboratory Chain of Custody" at the Schuyler plant, the test-and-hold station is where each sample is assigned a number that must be accurately carried through the test and hold process.

The skills he employs include being precise and comfortable with details. He honed those skills as a quality assurance technician checking the lean content of ground meat combos.

Excel is positioned as the first company in the North American beef industry to adopt a test-and-hold program for finished fresh ground beef, as opposed to only testing raw materials that go into ground beef. The program as a strategy dates back to 2001, beginning at Excel's Plainview, TX, facility.

The test-and-hold program--under the leadership of Dell Allen, Ph.D, who was recruited by Excel in 1986 from his Kansas State University teaching post--represents one element of Excel's overall quality effort, and has since expanded to its other beef-cattle and cow- processing facilities in the United States and Canada,...

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