Ear on Chicago; Tomato Canning - Dup

That is the sound of a flume, a trough filled with rushing water, which is carrying fresh ripe tomatoes into the massive consolidated food processing plant. The plant is located 130 miles east of Chicago in Pearson, Indiana, one of the thousands of areas which furnished the city of Chicago with foodstuffs. And today, along with our guide, Mr. Ellen Cummings, we're going to tour a plant which processes the tomato, turning out tremendous quantities of tomato ketchup, chili sauce, and other tomato products. We'll begin the story of the tomato on the farm of Eugene Regenberg, listening to a conversation between Eugene and Bob English who's a field man or a consultant for the company. Hi, Gene. Hi, Bob. How are you coming? Say, uh, pretty well. Why, your pickers haven't showed up yet, have they? No, I've been looking for them anytime. Well, they shouldn't be here. They said that we're going to take an early dinner and be right here after dinner, Gene. Well, I'm looking for them. What's the deal? You think you're going to have many tomatoes this time? Well, say, uh, kind of surprised me a little, Bob. They, uh, they're, uh, coming along pretty nice. And, uh, really, I think I'm going to have a crop after all. That fertilizer

you've plowed under, paid off, didn't it? Yes, I, uh, going to have to agree. I believe it's something that's going to have to. Well, the thing is, the spring of the year, you think they're always going to be worse than what they turn out to be. But, uh, my, y 'all, we've seen it happen time and time before that the earliest tomatoes aren't always the best, are they? Well, no, we got to, kind of looking out way now. I don't know. We're not quite done. But, uh, I'm surprised to see as many green ones and, uh, writing them up fast now. Looks like they might be a pretty decent quality, too, Gene. Yeah, I'm surprised. They, uh, they really are. They, uh, they look, uh, coming along. Uh, Gene, what kind of fertilizer are you using this year? Oh, why? I'm using, uh, 416, uh, no, 520, 20, I plowed under as a, uh, before I plowed the ground. Has that, has that produced better results this year than in previous years? Well, it's just a little early, but, uh, it looks like they're going to throw a good finish on the crop. It does look like

it may be just going to pay off. You know, these cows that you have around here, uh, are they an important part of your farming operation? Oh, about 90%, 90%, very much though. Now, Mr. English here, how often does he come into, uh, give you assistance? Well, uh, I'd say 10 days, a week, 10 days, he gets here. Sometimes I'm not always here, but, uh, he says he's here. Well, he comes in and checks, checks the, uh, the progress that your tomatoes are making. Well, yes, more or less, he, uh, he kind of gives me a lot of guidance on, uh, on, uh, picking an oil. Gene, how do you go about picking your tomatoes on this big farm here? Well, I, uh, hurry the help. Uh, Mexican help is what I have, uh, now, and, uh, most than 12 to 15 takes care of my, uh, picking and how many, how many, how many do you expect them, how many baskets to expect them to pick on today's run for a good normal days work? Well, I don't know, uh, it all depends on the picking and off a lot of it. It's a good

pick and they can, uh, run out, uh, six, seven hundred crates. Easy. Oh, gee, I see them coming, your help coming up the road here. So I guess you'll have to go and thanks very much for working with us. Thank you. Up, Gene is getting on his tractor now and he's going down the road to meet these folks. Now, uh, how many of farmers, such as Gene, uh, does consolidate food processors, usually contact to cover their requirements? Well, we have, uh, about 40 to, uh, 50 regular contacted growers and then we buy some open market, uh, acreage at the start and at the finish of the season, season to, uh, fill our needs. Now, do we supply seed for these farmers? Yes. We, uh, supply either seed or we supply plants either way. They wish this particular grower here is a seed grower and we, uh, supervise the growing of the tomatoes all the way through right from the day that the ground is plowed to the crop is often the fall.

How long can, uh, we pick tomatoes out from these, uh, the sacreds around here? Well, we're hoping the 10th of October or whenever the frost comes, we stop then. Has the, uh, through past history, has the frost come any earlier in recent years and, uh, or not? Uh, it's about the same time every year somewhere along the 1st of October, occasionally to the 5th of October. So by then we should have packed all of the tomatoes that we would require in the plant. We're hoping so. We're now standing at the scale house of the Consolid Food Processors plant in person Indiana. We've just returned from a grower's farm and now you can hear in the background a truck pulling up with vine -ripened tomatoes. These tomatoes have just been picked and are coming into the plant to be weighed in. Now if I, if you just follow me over to the weigh station and you'll hear the conversation between the trucker and the farmer and our weighmaster.

How many did I have? 181. 181? Yeah. Hi. How are you guys? Oh, yes. Just one today though. That load just, too low a gesture, that printer put me over the home. Two tomorrow. If I hold out that long, I got the tomatoes, all I need is an energy. How many? 288. 288. Yeah. Okay. Oh, I can do it. The truck pulls away now, moving to the unloading platform and here samples are taken from the load by a fast -moving government inspector who starts a typical crate or lug box into various grades and then after a very minute

examination, he either rejects or accepts the load. A lug box contains 35 pounds of fruit. By now they're being stacked on the concrete dock and they've been accepted. Now they're being moved onto a conveyor belt near the end of the flume and workers stand by dumping tomatoes into the water about 1 ,300 crates an hour, I understand. That would be 25 tons per hour, tomatoes destined for Chicago. Now we'll follow along with the flume. We're now standing at the flume and you can hear in the background noise of the one of the workers dumping the crates of tomatoes that have just been unloaded from the truck into this flume. The purpose of the flume is to wash the tomatoes.

This gives the tomatoes a very first bath before going in for further processing. By the way, you can hear in the background here the truck's pulling out which shows a constant movement of these tomatoes being brought into the plant. The plume itself is nothing more than a fresh water solution which washes these tomatoes off and carries them also into the plant for further processing. Now as we move down the line here we have stations all the way along this long 180 foot galvanized steel flume and all of these people are checking the tomatoes as they go through the flume and also taking the empty boxes off and reloading them on pallets. We're standing down at the end of the

flume and here comes Mr. Ed Shornfeld who is one of the gentlemen in charge of our production and quality control department. Mr. Shornfeld would you explain to Fahey what this end operation is here. As you notice we've got our tomatoes running down in the flume and from there they're diverted into three channels. Each one of which leads to a vegetable type washer and from there they move up a conveyor. Of course all along we have sprays of fresh water, well water from our own wells, continuously washing these fruit. From there the tomatoes go onto the belt where they are inspected trimmed by women. Thanks Ed and we'll see you later on. We're going to follow the tomatoes into the factory now and Ellen Cummings will describe the way the fruit is washed and paired.

Bay we're now standing inside the plant and seeing some of the final processes that the tomatoes are going to go through. As you'll notice far off in the right hand corner of the plant here there's a rotary drum which is commonly known as a squirrel cage as a washer that's right as a washer. Now these tomatoes are turned constantly in this drum to give a further bath then they come up the conveyor as you can see over here to the right and it goes through another steaming bath which is merely to give the tomatoes another wash off. As the tomatoes come on down the conveyor line on each side of the line there are a number of women. The women are handling these tomatoes just as the Mrs. Housewife would handle in her own kitchen. They're expecting the tomatoes to see that no blemishes or no imperfections are permitted to go through

the line so that that would of course if they did go through the line would only be a detriment to the product. Therefore as you see them they're cutting off the bad parts of the tomatoes which is usually caused by sun dense heat or surplus of rain which was with the tomatoes. Another very interesting thing to note may the tomatoes are constantly turning over on the conveyor belt. The purpose of this is so that the inspectors can see both sides of the tomato. Therefore if we didn't do this it's very possible that some bad pieces of tomato could get into the product. This is an intervention that was put in by our own mechanics at the plant here. Now that the tomatoes have been properly cut and all the bad pieces taken off as you see it goes on down this 80 foot conveyor system. At the end of the conveyor system is a machine which chops

the tomatoes for further processing. We're in the basement of the plant now in the area known as the pulp room. I can best describe it as a maze of stainless steel tubing with tiny wisps of steam, valve cylinders odd looking machinery and we're going to have to have an explanation here Ed. What is all this equipment doing? Well that's commonly known as a chopper. In other words it chops up the whole tomatoes coming from upstairs and the purpose of it is to rent to put them in a semi -fluid state so that they can be pumped to the preheater. What is meant by the preheater? What is the purpose of it? Well that's a big piece of equipment here as you notice and we take the tomatoes from room temperature and heat them up to about 175 to 180 degrees. A good share of the pectin is right underneath the skin and of course to get a good viscosity in our ketchup we want to make use of all of that pectin. Well when

you talk in terms of viscosity does that mean the thickness of the ketchup? It does to great extent in how it pours all right then where does this pulp go from the preheater? From the preheater it goes into a piece of a stainless steel equipment over here known as a pulper. Now the idea of the pulper is to separate the cyclone juice from the skins, core and seeds. What do you mean by cyclone juice Ed? What is that? Well that's a common term used in canning and that is the liquid fraction of the tomato. Well from here we pump the cyclone juice up to the cookers and that's where it's condensed and we follow on from there. Now we're standing in the cook room right underneath these tremendous storage tanks which is holding the cyclone juice which we referred to earlier in the program. The storage tanks are directly above the tremendous stainless

steel cookers. Now Charlie will you tell us about the process that we go through and the cooking of our product here. Well these spice bags these are the finest spices that they can buy anywhere. We have these have 13 different spices that goes into this tomato ketchup. We put this in very near at the end of the tomato. When a ketchup is done we add our onions and vinegar along through the process of cooking. The cook that we have now has been here for 25 years not off and on on cooking. He okayes every batch that goes down. He has helpers that go along with him but his word is the law. He okayes right down to the end. All right now Charlie I noticed that the spices are prepared in individual bags. What is the purpose of that? Well there's no guessing about it that way it says right amount and goes in each bag and that way

we know exactly what we've got in each cooker and we have a lady prepare that and that is all put ahead and the cook puts that in himself so there's no getting followed up for no mixing up on it at all. Now Charlie will you tell us a little bit about the cooking process? Well this cooking process takes approximately a half hour we cook it in these tremendous cookers. Long through the process these different spices are added. We start out with so many gallons of cyclone and we finish up then with so much of the finish ketchup. We know just exactly what we're going to finish up with. How do you determine when a batch of chili sauce or a batch of ketchup is prepared and when it's finished cooking? Well this is all done by our cook that I told you about a while ago and we keep checking on them we have girls that check on the refractometer that they keep a uniform product at all time. I notice also that there's some

plastic tubes just over the cookers there. What is the purpose of that? Well these plastic tubes are where we run in the vinegar. The vinegar is added to a certain cook a certain time on the cook and it's very European right in the process that's all time that's all set by the cook's helpers. How much does each cooker in terms of gallons hold as you put through a batch? We have different size cookers we have we have two different size one ends up with 300 approximately 300 gallons of finished ketchup and the others end up with 200 gallons of finished product. You know Fahey every household has a head cook. We also have a health head cook at the plant here Mr. Art Spiegel. Art how many years have you been at the Pearson plant? I've been here 31 years. Have you had any special training for preparing or in cooking of chili sauce and ketchup? No it's only sprints. Great teacher. How do you

go about actually cooking a big big batch of tomato ketchup? Well it's drawn in that so many gallons and added two year spices, your sugar, your salt, vinegar, and cooked down to a Pacific gravity test. What is meant by a Pacific gravity? That means your your salad to your tomatoes you want your salads up on your ketchup. If they want 31 % they want 36 % or 37 % I've got to cook it for them. Do you determine this by just seeing it by the eye or there's actual instruments that can measure this for you? Well I see it by the eye and then the girls down below tell me whether it's right or not but it's all ready down and they give me a pretty good test on what the girls do. How about the color of tomato products all right? Well I would say right now it's just nice looking ketchup if I seen for quite a while. Of course it depends on your tomatoes but it's

different kinds of tomatoes. When the tomato the batch of tomato ketchup that you're cooking right now is in the bat by over cooking or under cooking will you hurt the color of the tomato? Yes by over cooking you darken your ketchup and the quicker you can get it out of there the quicker you've got better looking ketchup. Now where does the ketchup go after it leaves the cooker? After leaving the cooker it must pass through a finisher. The finisher is a modified form of the pulper which we saw in the basement. It has a finer screen which will remove more of the pulpiness from the tomato and all the sweaty specs you'll notice on all of our ketchup. It is a good red color and practically free of specs. Then after leaving the finisher we have one more operation and that is going through the DR Rater.

The DR Rater is a relatively new piece of equipment and consists of a stainless steel cylinder in which we pull a vacuum. The ketchup enters the top, is sprayed and during the spraying process the vacuum will draw out all of the air so that after leaving it it drops directly down to the filler and from what's where it is bottled. From the cooking room which is the real kitchen of the plant we're moving upstairs now to the noisiest part of the operation and here in perfect military formation bottles are moving along. They're being sterilized, filled, capped and cooled. Each movement is most precise. This is though a drill sergeant we're calling out orders. All of the motions are mechanical of course and controlled to the nth degree. I understand some 250 ,000 bottles a day marched through here and on out to you. We asked our

guide in this portion, Charlie McDonnell, to explain the workings of the bottling operation. Well these bottles all come in the cases upside down and we dump these all on a track and they're unstrambled so to speak and fed into a filler. This filler 28 pocket filler fills the ketchup for approximately 190 degrees or better. Then it goes from there to a white cap machine that closes bottles for us. This is a run around 210 bottles a moment at the present. We can run it as high as 400 bottles a minute because we don't not running at that fast novel because we're leaving as we go. Now Charlie this machine here can the maximum capacity be reached as you progress with the increase in tonnage with the tomatoes as they come through the plant. Yes we can increase this up to 400 bottles a minute. And we have an extra

case through that takes care of it but we cannot leave it off the line that fast. I see that the bottles are sterilized before they come through the line. How has that done Charlie? Well that is done by live steam projecting in the bottles and on the bottles to heat them up so that they won't break and also sterilize them before they grant the fillers. Now Charlie we're standing by the cooling machine. Would you give our audience and fee here an explanation of exactly what is the purpose of this cooling machine and how long it is just tell us a few details about it. Well listen this cooling machine there's an automatic sweep off that sweeps the bottles off the track into the cooling machine and of course as I told you before we're bottling about 190 degrees these bottles are washed before they grant the cooling tank. Then as they go in there we have to cool them down the plain sprays until

they get to the other end of the tank it takes about 32 minutes of the break we're running these about the cooling tank is about six feet wide and 60 feet long holds about 10 ,000 bottles from this cooling tank there's we're standing here there's belts goes down along the end sweep these bottles away and stagger them into one row and as they can out of this one row they feed them to our automatic laborers. Now these automatic laborers here are putting on body labels and neck labels at the same time which makes it a little more complicated to keep the thing rolling right along to this stops it holds up the whole procession. Then if we're not leaving at any time we have a little gate right here we put in this sweep some off to the other track and they bypass the laborers and they go right on down to the bottle cacer. Here for the bottle cacer there's a man runs out there's the bottles line up there's our set off into four rows and these four rows as you get the tension certain amount of tension on are this cacer automatically

trips as this man pushes this up here as this is controlled by a hair as the case is filled and automatically drops down goes from this cacer over to a man that runs him into the ceiling machine here he stamps a date the hour the code the numbers on them on the bottles they go up there in this automatic celer then the automatic press do that back along a track and here men stack them on to pallets they're taken to the warehouse. We're outside the plant talking to some of the folks that we have who have come here to help us during the pack what is your name Gilberto Roriz. Where did you come from and what did you do there? I go past Texas I come from me go past Texas and I work and it's been each other. What is your name place sir? Peter Martinez and after the pack is over Pete where are you going to go? I want to be in Cout.

You're going where? Be in Cout to pick Cout in your icy. All right what is your name please sir? John Buster's and how many in your family are there? Oh but when you know about seven. Seven yeah. Is all your family here with you on the picking site? Yeah where are you going from here? Sections really? And what is your name please sir? Raymond Beger from San Thon Texas. From San Thon Texas. Yes. Are you going back to Texas after the pack is over it big? Do you follow the pack on around the cycle? Yeah. Okay thanks very much. We were accompanied on our tour of the plant today by Mr. H .A. Bishman who's the president of Consolidated Food Processors Incorporated. Before we left the plant we asked him for a word about modern food processing and what it may mean to you. Here's Mr. Bishman. What I'm intrigued in visiting this plant which I have done for many years is to make a comparison of the preparations that

we take in packing the fine quality product that is produced in this plant and goes to Mrs. Consumer under the monarch Richelow and Jack Spratt and Lee Label for nationwide distribution in this great United States and foreign countries is the similarity with our chief competitor. Our chief competitor is Mrs. Housewife. We can visualize her garden where she picks these fine luscious tomatoes from the vines and in sight of two hours perhaps she has made ketchup from her favorite recipes. This morning investing one of our growers in inspecting his fields which were certainly something very beautiful to look at and two hours later the same tomatoes that were in the fields on the visit were received at our plant went through or were inspected by the federal inspector for

grading and were washed and scrubbed and then on the inspection lines by our half a block long inspection lines to review each tomato to see that there was no defects from this close inspection from there these fine tomatoes go through the procedures and the techniques many of these techniques were developed and by our own staff in this organization then we go to the cooking room and from the cooking room to the closing machines and into the bottles and what intrigues me again is that this same ketchup that has gone into this bottle two hours ago was in the field with the ripe tomatoes on the vines