A CRUCIAL step in the bid to roll out objective carcase measurement gear across Australia's beef processing plants is about to be taken with validation work on predictive yield technologies kicking off in Queensland.
Meat scientists will be running calibration research on a beef dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, or DEXA, device, which measures meat, fat and bone in a carcase, at Teys processing plant in Rockhampton.
The team of researchers, from the Advanced Livestock Measurement Technologies Australia project, known as ALMTech, based at Murdoch University in Western Australia, will also be testing E+V surface image scanning, 3D imaging and a microwave fat depth measuring system in the same trials.
The output of all will be compared to a CT scanner's data, which is considered the gold standard of objective yield measurement in carcases.
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The beef DEXA unit, the first in Australia, was installed at the Teys plant just before the Covid pandemic and initial trials demonstrated it functioned well, research lead Dr Honor Calnan said.
"But we now need to compare the accuracy of the device with other technologies," she said.
"What we want to do is use all of those technologies on the same group of carcases and then check their ability to predict the bone, muscle and fat percentage against a CT scanner.
"The logic is that two carcases of the same weight don't necessarily have the same amount of saleable meat. These technologies must be able to accurately measure that."
CT scanning is the ultimate tool for the job but is very expensive and slow, so not suited - at least not yet - for implementation across abattoirs.
"We need to make sure all these other technologies, which can be rolled out, are trained to predict the same value that CT would - that they are robust, repeatable and give the same answer all the time," Dr Calnan said.
It is hoped the work will be underway by the end of this month and the researchers expect to be chipping away at the job for the next six months.
A big population of cattle covering a diverse cross-section of types, breeds and sizes is necessary and Teys has agreed to source livestock it might not usually process for the job.
ALMTech boss Professor Graham Gardner said this would be a vital step in the OCM journey - providing a side-by-side comparison of four key yield technologies that can be used in the Australian industry.
"It will give processors an excellent feel for the accuracy of these technologies that we have not had before," he said.
"The job after that will be to put our shoulder to the wheel on the economics and business case around implementing these highly accurate measurements."
DEXA is already widely used in the lamb game, with half the country's lamb kill now measured with DEXA devices.
Shan Goodwin
Shan Goodwin steers ACM’s national coverage of the beef industry. Shan has worked as a journalist for 30 years, the majority of that with agricultural publications. She spent many years as The Land’s North Coast reporter and has visited beef properties and stations throughout the country and overseas. She treats all breeds equally. Contact 0427686187. E: s.goodwin@austcommunitymedia.com.au
Shan Goodwin steers ACM’s national coverage of the beef industry. Shan has worked as a journalist for 30 years, the majority of that with agricultural publications. She spent many years as The Land’s North Coast reporter and has visited beef properties and stations throughout the country and overseas. She treats all breeds equally. Contact 0427686187. E: s.goodwin@austcommunitymedia.com.au
