What’s your lamb carcase really worth?

However, the challenge lies in getting real-time measurements of intra-muscular fat (IMF) from abattoirs, says Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) research and development manager Richard Apps.

Mr Apps, was the keynote speaker at the recent SuperBorder Conference, and took the producers through the current work MLA is doing in developing an objective measurement program in respect to lamb and sheep carcases.

There are strong links from the breeding perspective in terms of what seed stock producers are doing in selecting for characteristics in respect to carcase values, Mr Apps said when recognising the application of leading breeders. 

“In very simple terms the value of a carcase can be broken into two components – yield and eating quality,” he said.

“Yield in the sense of how many kgs product you have to sell and eating quality in the sense of how you can use the quality of that product to extract a high price for it.”

In taste tests conducted, it was noted consumers are willing to pay to for the better quality cuts and this is being seen across the globe.

“The very strong message is we need to ensure the eating quality of our product in order to extract the most value from it,” he said.

“The challenge we have is one of our key drivers in eating quality is intra-muscular fat (IMF), [but] we can’t implement this in industry until we can get measurement in real time in the abattoir.”

MLA has tested a number of processes to effectively measure carcase yield at chain speed.

“The majority of lambs processed in Australia are GR measured (total tissue thickness at the 12^th rib, 110mm from the midline), however the accuracy of this is variable particularly when done by manual palpation,” Mr Apps said.

“GR knives are more accurate but when you use them in a plant that is running at nine to 12 lambs per minute it is a serious challenge.”

That is one of the simple things MLA is trying to solve, and make the Ausmeat required standard a simple measurement and GR more accurate.

“In terms of IMF, we a strong focus on Hyperspectral Imaging and we do have preliminary data which gives us predictive capacity which is quite useful in giving us a valid comparison,” Mr Apps said.

Mr Apps said MLA is currently building a relationship with a large US imaging company who have Hyperspectral and NIR (near infrared reflectance spectroscopy), and they are hopeful of a successful outcome. 

“To those who are familiar with NIR which is widely used for testing various things, NIR is quite a powerful tool, but it is challenging when you take it out of a nice controlled environment

To put it in a challenging environment like an abattoirs is quite a difficult thing to do and technically it has a lot of power but Mr Apps admitted converting it to a robust implementable application will be challenging.

The objective of being able to accurately measure saleable meat yield was demonstrated when two carcasses where displayed, each of 23kg dressed, one was a four score and the other a score two.  

“Their is an eight percent difference in saleable meat yield between the two carcasses,” Mr Apps said.

“What that adds up to in the end is the score two 23kg carcase had an extra 2.7kg of saleable product.”

“That is worth between $30 and $40 over the counter today when you wander into a butcher shop.”

Mr Apps pointed out that is the sort of monetary impact which can be had on the value of a carcass by having the extra fat at the targeted carcase weight.

“That is very significant and one of the great costs to the industry,” he said.

In terms of developing a process with consistent accuracy, Mr Apps said he was very confident in expressing complete faith in the DEXA systems which are currently in operation.

“DEXA is a highly accurate predictor of carcase composition in lambs at real time chain speed,” he said.