The Importance of Wearing Gloves When Processing Meat
When stocking up on meat processing supplies, gloves are one of the most important pieces of gear for butchers and other meat processing employees. Gloves for meat processing come in many materials and meet a variety of needs, from personal protection to making the process more sanitary.
Here is what you need to know about gloves and their vital role in meat processing:
Gloves Are Important for Personal Safety
Meatpacking and poultry industries continue to pose dangerous health hazards. Many of these injuries are due to cuts or stabs from using dangerous equipment, like knives, without personal protective equipment.
Personal protective equipment (PPE) includes any item worn in the workplace to keep the person safe. This equipment includes hard hats, aprons, boots, and of course—gloves. Meat processing involves the use of very sharp knives and equipment to bone, chop, slice, and dice meat products into the right portions for meat packing and shipping off to grocery stores, restaurants, and consumers.
To make for an even more hazardous work environment, many of the meat products handled by butchers and meat processors contain a lot of fats and juices that make for slick work. Gloves help the meat processor maintain a good grip on the meat and also protect them personally from cuts and injuries should the blade slip.
Gloves are also crucial when handling various chemicals. Disposable gloves protect hands when using cleaning chemicals to maintain the shop environment for food safety. Reusable nitrile gloves help keep the hands safe in scenarios like these, no matter what liquids they encounter.
Gloves Are Important for Consumer Safety
Raw meat can easily contaminate surfaces, people, and other foods with harmful bacteria. While proper sanitization and cleaning are essential to keeping your meat processing environment safe from cross-contamination, gloves are also useful for reducing contamination when used properly.
Because cut-resistant gloves are meant for reuse, they need to be washed between uses just as you would wash your hands. However, it can be difficult to thoroughly clean metal mesh gloves or other gloves that have a lot of gaps where contamination can occur. This is where disposable nitrile gloves come in handy (pun intended).
Types of Gloves for Meat Processing
Safe meat processing requires gloves that keep the process sanitary, avoid cross-contamination, provide a secure grip, and are either cut-proof or cut-resistant to reduce the likelihood of personal injury. Here are the types of direct food handling gloves every meat processor should have on hand to check all the appropriate boxes:
Cut-Resistant Gloves
Cut-resistant gloves are exactly what they sound like—gloves that are resistant to cutting! Constructed of high-performance fibers and stainless steel, cut-resistant gloves are a great option to protect your knife-wielding hand against injury. Keep in mind that while these gloves offer excellent protection against cuts, they are not cut-proof or puncture-proof. For this reason, they are not recommended when using moving or highly serrated blades.
At Bunzl Processor Division (BPD), we are proud sellers of WorkHorse® cut-resistant gloves, with a wide variety for our meat processing businesses to choose from. Our best-selling WorkHorse® gloves blend high-performance fibers with stainless steel for FDA-approved anti-microbial fibers. Consumers have raved about these gloves saving their fingers more than once!
Metal Mesh Gloves
Metal mesh gloves provide the highest level of protection against knife-related injuries, guarding the user against most cuts and punctures that may occur if a knife slips during use. The heavy gauge stainless steel rings make metal mesh gloves very durable but less flexible than cut-resistant gloves, making them preferable for use on the non-knife-wielding hand that doesn’t need the same grip reliability as the knife-wielding hand. The WorkHorse® stainless steel metal mesh gloves we have at BPD are the most durable, long-lasting, and comfortable metal mesh gloves on the market!
And an ideal companion to metal mesh gloves are string knit gloves. String knit gloves are ideal for keeping hands warm in cold environments. They’re effective worn alone, but also a great companion as a glove liner when paired with metal mesh gloves. String knit gloves are machine knit, providing excellent grip and comfort for meat processing. We carry a variety of knit glove weights to choose from, including light, medium, and heavy-weight. In addition, we carry a smaller-sized women’s string knit glove to best fit women’s hands. We also offer a shrink-resistant option.
Nitrile Disposable Gloves
Disposable nitrile gloves are important to have on hand for sanitary meat processing and protection against cross-contamination. While latex, vinyl, and poly gloves are also options for disposable gloves in meat processing, nitrile is the most durable and resistant to all manner of substances you may encounter during meat processing including animal fats, petroleum, oil-based solvents, and caustics. Nitrile gloves are also 3-5x more puncture-resistant than latex gloves, reducing the risk of contamination.
Our 650 Series Premium Nitrile Disposable Gloves come in six bright colors to meet color coding compliance and make it easy to spot contamination if gloves should happen to tear during meat processing.
Nitrile Reusable Gloves
While disposable nitrile gloves have a time and place, reusable nitrile gloves are also valuable in the meat processing industry. Nitrile reusable gloves are ideal for sanitation purposes, as well as the initial cutting and processing of animals. With features to enhance grip, these gloves bring greater levels of dexterity too.
Diamond Grip Unlined Nitrile Gloves have a curved finger design and contoured palm to minimize hand fatigue. These gloves offer longer wear, as well as better protection against snags, punctures, abrasions, and cuts. WorkHorse® 11-Mil, Unlined, 13-Inch Straight Cuff Nitrile Gloves, available in multiple sizes, are lint-free and reusable across many food processing applications, even sanitation and maintenance. And we’re also pleased to carry Solvex Unlined Nitrile Gloves, which will not weaken or swell in most solvents, caustics, or animal fats. Their curved finger design and contoured palm minimize hand fatigue, equipping employees to handle the largest combination of physical and chemical hazards.
Give Your Meat Processing a Hand
Wearing gloves is about more than simply giving the appearance of cleanliness. Gloves help keep the user and the consumer safe throughout meat processing and beyond by providing a layer of protection to help reduce contamination and keep the user’s hands safe when using sharp knives.
Shop all of our gloves for food processing along with everything you need for safe and sanitary meat processing, and reach out at 1-800-456-5624 for personal assistance in choosing the right equipment for your facility.
