EXHIBITORS in this year’s NSW Beef Spectacular Feedback Trial were given a glimpse of new objective grading technology currently being trialled by Teys Australia.
During the trial’s 10th anniversary presentation dinner, Teys Australia livestock strategic operations team member Jasmine Green, Wagga, said Teys is really starting to look at ways they can improve their grading process and increase the transparency for producers.
“So we have started doing a lot of trial work with the VBG2000 camera technology from E+V Technology in Germany,” Ms Green said.
“This particular camera takes a photo of the rib eye and then it actually does an analysis of meat colour, fat colour, marbling and also the level of rib fat and eye muscle area in that particular carcase.”
Ms Green said this technology is used in 90 per cent of plants commercially in America at the moment, but is not currently used commercially in any plants within Australia.
“We have been doing a lot of work to be able to use this technology to actually make it suitable to use in an Australian grading system, and to be able to work against the AUSMEAT and Meat Standards Australia grading systems,” she said.
Teys Australia is currently still undertaking a series of trials to determine its suitablility under Australian grading conditions but Ms Green said they thought it was suitable being the 10th year of the trial to give the participant a sneak peak of what is coming in the future.
For the first time, objective grading technology was used on cattle in the feedback trial to measure the rib eye area and capture the rib eye images that were given to trial participants in their feedback reports and results booklets.
“To get it (the camera) fully approved for commercial use, Teys Australia is planning to conduct several large scale commercial trials using the technology in 2019,” Ms Green said.