4th-year students of the Department of Food Technology and Biotechnology took and excursion to the production unit of Ariant Agricultural Firm LLC. The event was held in the frameworks of a flash mob called “No Turngates”. Senior students had a chance to get familiar with the main stages of meat raw material processing: starting from weighing the raw material and finishing with its cooling and wrapping of the finished products. Students attentively listened to the excursion guide’s description of the company’s structure, formation of assortment of the released products, and arrangement of the quality management system.
One of participants of the excursion, Anna Khalanskaya, talked about her impressions:
– When entering the enterprise, one feels psychologically comfortable. This feeling completely fits into the strict arrangement of work in the shop floor. Even while standing on the doorstep, you can feel, see, hear the active, bubbling life of the enterprise. Well-coordinated work of the employees, working as a system of one organism, is undoubtedly impressing; this system’s work is a guarantee of the quality of products. It is one thing to watch the process on TV, and another one – to take part in this in person and analyze the idea of how much efforts and resources are put into meat products that we buy in a shop. It was inspiring! It is amazing how a company specializing in meat processing organized everything so well in order to provide comfortable working conditions for its employees and acquiring a good-quality result. I would like to build a career here in order to make sure of this thing.
At the end of the excursion, research fellows of the enterprise’s laboratory invited students to taste a new assortment of meat products.
In order to become a professional in the meat-processing industry, one only needs to get enrolled and successfully complete training in the programme of Food Products of Animal Origin. Education programme in this major has been elaborated, taking into account the foreign experience in training of specialists in rational process management as well as in application of contemporary methods of research and simulation in order to enhance the manufacturing efficiency. In students’ training, the accent is made on acquiring the industrial skills. This gets achieved due to implementation of practice-oriented theoretical module.
The programme includes a massive block of lab classes and practical training. All classes of this module are held using advanced engineering equipment; future specialists produce certain types of food products, assess the quality of finished products, carry out tasting of food products. The course of laboratory and practical classes includes exclusive master classes and workshops featuring experienced technologists and quality managers.
In the learning process, students master the principles of raw material selection, taking into account its producibility. They also learn about processes of food production, methodology of formatting the engineering and process documentation, the principles of workflow arrangement in accordance with requirements provided in ISO 9000.
Training on this education programme is carried out by academic staff with professional competencies, as well as by practicing specialists from among executives and leading specialists of food industry enterprises.
Graduates of the Food Products of Animal Origin programme are in-demand at processing companies of the meat, dairy and fish industries and work there as technologists, quality service engineers, or production unit masters. They also get employed to enterprises producing auxiliary ingredients and materials for the industry and work there as process managers and process consultants.