P.PSH.2058 - Validation, AUS-MEAT accreditation and commercial integration of the Frontmatec beef grading camera

Summary

This project aims to bring a second commercial suppler of an AUS-MEAT accredited beef grading camera's to the Australian industry. This camera provides a different physical form and functionality thereby providing an objective grading option to more businesses as it can be used at a fixed grading station or for within-chiller grading. In addition to traits already in the industry meat grading language, this project will also seek to train the camera to output IMF which, if successful, may open new grading options for highly marbled carcases.

The camera has obtained AUS-MEAT accreditation for grading beef carcases:

• caudal to the 10-13th rib for the chiller assessment attributes
• MSA marbling
• AUS-MEAT marbling
• EMA
• meat and fat colour.

Accreditation for subcutaneous rib fat thickness and IMF% was not obtained during this project. The camera is producing highly repeatable results and is ready for adoption by the industry. The results of the project will be used to promote adoption of Q-FOM Beef in the Australian beef slaughter industry.

Objectives

Q-FOM provides repeatable and reproducible objective ribeye grading. Adoption of the Q-FOM Beef camera OM technology will ensure fair payment and correct eating quality determination for consumers. OM technology adoption will remove grading biases caused by human grader-to-grader differences and classification preferences. The industry must now evaluate how grader variation and Q-FOM precision affects brand consistency, integrity and performance, and evaluate the economic impact of improved precision on producer feedback and how this influences consistency and quality of supply in future.

Key findings

• The Q-FOM Beef camera is fully approved for grading beef carcases quartered caudal to the 10-13th rib on the following traits as of November 2023.
• Q-FOM Beef is fully integrated to the plant database via GoSystems.
• The Q-FOM Beef camera is ready for adoption by industry.
• It should be considered that Q-FOM measured meat colour and MSA marble scores differ from the commercial graders at ACC. Note: these traits fulfill accuracy against expert graders.
• More than 92% of the carcases in the commercial trial were graded by the Q-FOM, regardless of carcase presentation.

Benefits to industry

Q-FOM provides repeatable and reproducible objective ribeye grading. Adoption of the Q-FOM Beef camera OM technology will ensure fair payment and correct eating quality determination for consumers. OM technology adoption will remove grading biases caused by human grader-to-grader differences and classification preferences. The industry must now evaluate how grader variation and Q-FOM precision affects brand consistency, integrity and performance and evaluate the economic impact of improved precision on producer feedback and how this influences consistency and quality of supply in future.

MLA action

The outcome is that a case study of learnings of integration of hook track and solution for individual carcase identification into business workflows and operating systems will be used to develop generic guidelines for adoption and integration of new OM technologies. MLA create case studies from each of the early OM adoption projects that can be made available to companies to help leverage the uptake and adoption of OM technologies into their business systems and processes.

Future research

• Accreditation trials must be designed to ensure data collection enabling equipment providers to present equipment performance on all traits, full range.
• Subcutaneous rib fat thickness and IMF% needs further R&D work before these traits fulfill the approval criteria.
• Tools and features should be implemented which enable up-stream slaughter line feedback to be used for process optimisation.