fifteen past three/a quarter past three
Public Network Poster Journalist Liang Wenyi’s first song Liaocheng Report
Cats have become a new hobby of young people, and many people are addicted to it. If you have such a job, there will be a group of lovely cats around you every day when you go to work, and you can lick cats at any time. The salary is not low, but you need to try cat food. Will you be excited?
Recently, the "2021 Taobao Unpopular New Occupation Observation" was released, and there were cat food tasters among the unpopular occupations on the list. What kind of occupation is this? What is the daily work like? On December 16th, the poster journalist of Dazhong.com came to Guaibao Pet Food Group Co., Ltd., a pet food enterprise with a stable production scale in China, and interviewed Liu Xinda, a cat food taster in the testing center of the company, to learn about the daily life of the cat food taster.
Cat food taster Liu Xinda
Do cat food tasters really want to eat cat food?
Liu Xinda, a post-90s, joined Maifudi, a self-owned brand of Guaibao three years ago. She is mainly responsible for cat food testing, and tasting cat food is a part of the testing work. Every year, Liu Xinda probably tastes hundreds of kinds of cat food.
For eating cat food, Liu Xinda’s friends and family will be a little surprised at first and ask him why he wants to eat this. After listening to the explanation, everyone will understand. "I told them why I wanted to bite (cat food). I wanted to see something. They still understood it. Sometimes they were curious and would eat one." Liu Xinda told reporters with a smile.
When eating granular cat food, Liu Xinda generally has three steps: first, take out a cat food, open it by hand and observe the internal structure; Take out another cat food and bite it open with your teeth; Take out another cat food and chew it completely in your mouth.
What are the details of these three steps? Liu Xinda said that it is mainly to judge whether the hardness and brittleness of cat food are appropriate. From the perspective of granular cat food, cats generally like moderate hardness and brittleness. If the cat food is particularly hard and not brittle, it may be that the humidity of the product is relatively high, so it is necessary to consider whether there is a problem in the drying process. At this time, it is necessary to use the machine to further test and make an accurate judgment. If there is a problem, the process parameters should be adjusted in time.
When a cat food taster eats cat food, it represents the taste and preference of cats. "Just like we eat cookies, among all kinds of cookies, there may be one that you will especially like when you eat it, and so will cats." Liu Xinda said. Then how can we understand the taste of cats as human beings? "You can’t sum up your experience until you eat much." Liu Xinda said, "Because when you first entered the business, you took a bite of cat food, and you didn’t know what the hardness and brittleness were like. Do cats like to eat it? Is it suitable? Right? In fact, I don’t know, it is mainly a process of experience accumulation. "
Not only are people different from cats, but also from person to person. Eating the same cat food, different tasters will have different judgments. Liu Xinda thinks that being a cat food taster needs experience, but this experience can only be personal experience. "For example, if I know that the moisture content of this cat food product exceeds 10%, I will remember the strength and feelings when I bite this cat food. The next time I taste it, I will know whether the moisture content in this cat food exceeds 10%."
Cat food tasters have to do these things besides eating cat food.
Cat food tasters rely on experience, and more scientific and professional means are needed for the complete test of cat food.
"With the development of the industry, we are now introducing some more professional testing methods. It is only a preliminary judgment for people to taste and bite cat food." Liu Xinda said that in fact, to test whether the cat food is good or not, the "cat owner" has to make the final decision.
There are nearly 100 different kinds of cats in the testing center of Guaibao. On the second floor of the test center, there are ten bright rooms with different layouts, including hanging chairs, cat climbing frames, cat mats and so on. These are all for more than 60 "cat owners" in the room. These lovely cats are also the protagonists of the Kaobo cat food test. Through the test, we can know whether the cat food is loved by cats and whether it can meet the nutritional needs of cats.
Liu Xinda told reporters that he is not only a cat food taster, but also the cat food testing supervisor of the Guaibao Testing Center. The whole cat food testing process includes three steps: palatability test, nutrition test and mouth tolerance test, and physical test.
The palatability test is a short-term test, which mainly tests the "first impression" of cats on cat food. "Cat food will give off some smells. You see, I brought some cat food, and the cat quickly ran to me. The smell of cat food can stimulate the appetite of cats. " During the interview, Liu Xinda put several small pots of different kinds of cat food on her legs. Several "little greedy cats" smelled the fragrance and ran over, constantly raising their front paws to grab the cat food, and refused to leave for a long time.
Generally, the palatability test is carried out for two days, and the cat is allowed to eat at a fixed point twice a day, and there are two kinds of cat food to choose from each time. The staff will record what kind of cat food the cat eats first and what kind of cat food it eats more, so as to reflect Mimi’s preferences.
Cats like to eat, is it just because they smell good? After eating for a week, will you still like it? To know this problem, it is necessary to carry out mouth resistance test. Liu Xinda said that cat food should not only attract cats to eat in a short time, but also make cats like to eat all the time and provide adequate nutrition. In order to achieve this goal, the oral resistance test will take at least ten days. Liu Xinda said that cats like to eat fresh meat and need high-protein food. To test the nutrition of cat food, besides seeing whether cats will eat it for a long time, it needs to be verified by some scientific methods, which is also the main work that Liu Xinda is doing at present.
In the nutritional test of cat food, it is necessary to see the influence of eating a cat food for a long time on body weight, food intake and digestive safety. "If the cat is fed for ten days and a half months and all the indicators are normal, then this product can basically meet the requirements." Liu Xinda said.
Compared with palatability and mouth resistance tests, physical tests require the least time, and the results can be issued on the same day. Liu Xinda gave the reporter an example of texture analyzer used in physical detection. Texture analyzer can simulate the damage state of granular cat food when it comes into contact with cat teeth during chewing, measure the strength needed to break cat food, and evaluate the crispness of cat food. Liu Xinda showed reporters the hardness curves of several different cat foods after testing on the computer. "We can’t just look at the final results, but also look at the changes in the hardness curve during the pressing down of the machine. The more changes, the more complicated the curve display, which means that the cat food is more crisp. From the change of the curve, the taste of cat food can be reflected. "
Liu Xinda told reporters that the three steps in cat food testing are generally carried out simultaneously, and the process takes one month for short and six months to one year for long.
From people making decisions to "cats" and data having the final say
There are more than 20 people working in the testing center with Liu Xinda. In addition to the staff who specialize in testing, there are also pet doctors, animal nutritionists, statisticians, pet beauticians, animal behaviorists and so on. There are 8 cat food tasters and dog food tasters in the Guaibao Testing Center. In 2020, the testing center probably tested more than 400 kinds of cat food.
Liu Yaoqing, director of Guaibao Testing Center, told reporters that the position of cat food taster was actually very important at the beginning of Guaibao’s establishment. Because at that time, all cat food was tasted by people and judged by rich experience, and then decided whether the product could go on the market. With the development of the company and the optimization of the system, the work of cat food tasters has gradually been "replaced" by other ways, such as trying to feed cats and digitizing the characteristics of cat food with instruments. "The importance of cat food tasters is gradually declining." Liu Yaoqing said.
However, Liu Yaoqing believes that cat food tasters are irreplaceable, for example, the characteristics of cat food such as smell still need to be described subjectively. "For example, for the two cat foods tested, the effect of product A is better than that of product B. Our taster will try it again and describe the odor characteristics of the two products. In the next development, we will move closer to the characteristics of product A. The current instruments can’t completely replace the human description. A kitten can tell you what it likes to eat through actions, but it won’t describe what it tastes like. People can still play a role. "
Liu Yaoqing revealed that the salary of the cat food taster in the company is high within the enterprise; From the same industry in the country, it is also relatively good; Compared with the average salary of local civil servants, it is also higher.
As a cat food taster, Liu Xinda also believes that the practice of judging the quality of cat food and supporting the listing of cat food will be gradually eliminated. Now the work of cat food tasters is more as a link in quality control.
Cat food tasters, as an unpopular profession, have entered the public’s field of vision, behind which is the rapidly developing pet economy in China. The data shows that by 2023, the scale of the pet market in China will increase from 172.2 billion yuan in 2018 to 472.3 billion yuan. Facing the huge market, Liu Yaoqing said that in the next step, Guaibao will make the pet food of its own brand Maifudi more and more elaborate, and realize the personalized customization of pet food according to the nutritional needs of different dog and cat categories. "This is the same as human food. For example, to lose weight for a cat, we will increase the content of certain nutrients in the diet food and reduce the energy without reducing the intake and ensuring satiety, which is more in line with the physiological and behavioral characteristics of animals."
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