Current Safety Legislation of Food Processing Smart Robot Systems – The Red Meat Sector

Abstract

Ensuring the safety of the equipment, its environment and most importantly, the operator during robot operations is of paramount importance. Robots and complex robotic systems are appearing in more and more industrial and professional service applications. However, while mechanical components and control systems are advancing rapidly, the legislation background and standards framework for such systems and machinery are lagging behind. As part of a fundamental research work targeting industrial robots and industry 4.0 solutions for completely automated slaughtering, it was revealed that there are no particular standards addressing robotics systems applied to the agri-food domain. More specifically, within the agri-food sector, the only standards existing for the meat industry and the red meat sector are hygienic standards related to machinery. None of the identified standards or regulations consider the safety of autonomous robot operations or human–robot collaborations in the abattoirs. The goal of this paper is to provide a general overview of the regulations and standards (and similar guiding documents) relevant for such applications, that could possibly be used as guidelines during the development of inherently safe robotic systems for abattoirs. Reviewing and summarizing the relevant standard and legislation landscape should also of-fer some instrumental help regarding the foreseen certification procedure of meat processing robots and robot cells for slaughterhouses in the near future.