Tactical Edge Mobility Delivers Safety Solutions for Meat Inspectors and More

Lead with Speed: Mobile Solutions Streamline Food Inspections and Maintain Safety

When you enter a grocery store, you’re probably not thinking about the safety, efficacy, and security of the food presented. You’re likely making your way down the aisles, depositing items into your cart and thinking about what to make for dinner.

While you may not be entirely focused on food safety, the USDA surely is. The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is an agency within the United States Department of Agriculture responsible for ensuring that our supply of meat, poultry, and egg products is safe. Inspections are what drive this safety. Per FDA.gov, inspections can also help verify compliance, be used as a surveillance tool in the wake of potential outbreaks, and police and track issues like product recalls.

From paper to precision

Although agricultural data collection is imperative, meat inspections have historically been conducted using paper-based processes. For decades inspectors used printed forms and documents to record data and observations during the inspection process. These paper records would include information about the condition of the meat, the facility's compliance with safety and hygiene regulations, and any notable findings.

However, in recent years, there has been a growing trend to digitize and modernize such inspections for the sake of efficiency, accuracy, and real-time analysis.

Mobility takes this a step further. Mobility means inspectors always know what is necessary to complete inspections. Furthermore, mobility ensures no information goes unchecked or falls through the cracks. As an added bonus, everything happens much faster, too.

Take USDA inspectors, for example, who are often faced with a frustrating “hurry-up-and-wait” mentality—including receiving improper paper documentation, waiting on a form sign-off, or wrestling with lag time. These pain points are precisely why inspectors need mobile apps that can provide clarity on when, where, and how meat inspections can occur safely and efficiently.

Everyone can benefit from secure mobility

Mobility at the Tactical Edge—meaning the capability to access and utilize data and resources in the field and execute tasks quickly—is often referenced when discussing the responsibilities of pilots or military operations as a whole. But what about those simply trying to do their job safely and effectively? Mobility is a powerful tool for any field-based operation, including USDA food inspectors.

Food facilities must be sterilized, secure, and highly scrutinized. But the actual environments are part of a much larger checklist. A meat inspector's job is to ensure the safety and quality of meat products by inspecting processing facilities, examining meat for compliance with regulations, and maintaining detailed records of these inspections. While this is an incredibly important job, meat inspectors often face challenges, including heavy workloads and tight schedules as they strive to meet quotas while maintaining rigorous standards.

Navigating complex and ever-changing regulations while dealing with the physical demands of the job can also be a pain point. The reality is that inspectors are often overworked and understaffed, resulting in shortages and concerns surrounding the completion and efficacy of every inspection.

The instant and obvious benefit of mobility is that it allows data to be collected and recorded in real-time instead of after an assessment, resulting in better on-task efficiency and less human error. Similar to any field-based position, inspectors have always collected and recorded their data in the field, then traveled back to a central location to re-enter this information. Cloud based computing in the form of a mobile application would ideally interact with inspector’s records and support data capture at any time, in any location. Most importantly this would save significant time and headaches.

Less redundancy, more productivity

Tactical Edge mobility ultimately removes antiquated paper-based processes fraught with errors and wasted time—enabling streamlined, automated solutions that support safer working environments for all involved.

To boost productivity further, if mobile technology were used, meat inspectors could automatically transfer data to others in the field rather than perform manual handoffs. This solution alone would significantly reduce costs related to task redundancy and save precious time.

The benefits here are astounding. Just think about quality improvements—no more handwritten notes that are poorly transcribed or, worse yet, lost. Similarly, secure mobile solutions could also provide instant approval for farmers hoping to sell their cattle across borders, creating an increase in revenue for small business owners.

The Monkton Advantage

Agriculture is a nuanced industry with extensive rules and regulations. Mobile solutions can provide clarity on when, where, and how meat inspections can occur safely.

And they need to happen securely. But how can you uniquely prove that the mobile device you’re using is the device you deployed, while simultaneously providing trusted data from trusted devices? (Find out in our quick Anchorage product overview below.)

Anchorage: Uniform security, regardless of device, user, or location

Monkton Anchorage is a patented Zero Trust technology that provides immutable proof that a device is what it claims to be at a hardware level. Anchorage enables non-repudiation of IoT, mobile, and Edge Computing devices analogous to devices used by meat and food inspectors.

A Cloud Native mobile application, backed with Anchorage’s hardware-based root of trust, would enable USDA meat inspectors to perform inspections and instantly log the results. For farmers in the U.S. selling beef to Canada, there can be a two- or three-day delay from inspection to that information being logged into a computer. By capturing this data on a phone and instantly transmitting the results to the cloud, commerce between countries can move faster.

With the combined power of secure mobile apps and Edge Computing, meat inspections can be conducted with enhanced efficiency, accuracy, and security. These technologies enable real-time data collection, secure transmission, local analysis, offline functionality, centralized storage, real-time monitoring, and integration with supply chain systems, ultimately facilitating safety.

Anchorage is mission-focused and offers a secure mobile solution that is Edge-ready, easy to use, and adapts to fit into ever-changing environments. As a custom mobile and Cloud Native mobility solution, Anchorage also adheres to the Department of Defense’s NSA NIAP standards and can be deployed in record time.

Mobility for Food Inspections

As expectations for security, efficiency, and accuracy continue to rise, those who ensure the quality of our food supply need technology that solves their daily challenges.

By building solutions tailored to end-users’ needs, Monkton rapidly iterates to deploy highly secure digital solutions that are both Cloud Native and Edge-ready, so work can be done faster and with more precision—virtually anywhere.