1. Importance and diversity of cutting in the food industry

Food cutting is a very frequent unitary operation on agri-food production and processing lines, particularly when harvesting agricultural produce, trimming before processing, or portioning products before packaging. There are even branches of industry where product manufacture is almost a succession of cutting operations, such as slaughterhouse cutting plants, 4th range salad factories (i.e. bagged salads) or cheese pre-packaging.

These operations must meet three imperatives:

• A wide variety of operations and shapes: the food industry's cutting requirements are extremely varied, both in terms of the operations to be carried out (peeling, trimming, boning, portioning, etc.) and in terms of the shape and size of the objects to be obtained: slice, strip, sliced, grated, cube, round, quarter, portion, section, steak, cutlet,...