High-tech carcase data

The answer is 'yes' for Western Australia Meat Marketing Co-operative (WAMMCO) in Katanning.

WAMMCO is the fifth Australian sheep meat processing plant to install a Dual Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry (DEXA) unit with the support of Meat & Livestock Australia and Advanced Livestock Management Technologies.

After several years of trial work, the system is nearing completion and it is set to revolutionise WA's meat industry as we know it.

WAMMCO supply and development manager Rob Davidson said DEXA was the most accurate way of detecting body composition or kilograms of lean bone and fat at real chain speed in harsh environments.

This means meat processors could provide immediate feedback to growers and give them a better understanding of the product they are producing.

"As a WA processor we are very fortunate to have such a resource in terms of the scientists at Murdoch University and to work so closely with them on a day-to-day basis," Mr Davison said.

In August, 200 bodies of multiple sheep breeds including Merinos, a small line of Dorpers and some terminal crossbreds were scanned through the DEXA unit at Katanning.

Some were also scanned through a traditional medical computed tomography (CT) scanner for comparison.

Mr Davidson said comparing the two scans provided "the absolute" kilograms of lean muscle and fat.

He said a team of three butchers boned out every single carcase and broke down the animal's bodies, to assist WAMMCO with the development of a predictive cuts calculator.

The DEXA is generally positioned in two main areas of an abattoir including on the slaughter floor and exiting from the chillers on entry into a boning room.

WAMMCO opted to install the DEXA unit on its slaughter floor.

This was to provide carcase feedback to members in a similar philosophy to that used when the Katanning processing plant utilised VIAScan technology.

VIAScan technology also estimated lean meat yield and WAMMCO drove the technology to enable an increase grower payment based on the predictive yields.

"From a processor's point-of-view, DEXA allows us to make a pre-chiller assessment of our carcases and sort like-for-like bodies," Mr Davidson said.

"For example, if you have a 18 kilogram carcase going into a boning room without DEXA you don't know if it is heavy in the loin or simply heavy in bone.

"If it is heavy in the loin you'd want to put a knife into it, but if it is heavy in the bone you'd want to sell it as a whole carcase.

"DEXA allows us to do pre-chiller assessments of our bodies to know what we should be able to get from our boning room the following day."

DEXA provides the data that drives robotic cutting towers.

Those towers deliver improved cutting specifications from millimetre perfect cutting, improvements in yield recovery, as well as an enhanced shelf life due to a reduced need for boning room workers to touch the product.

This is ideal for exporters and marketers in terms of ensuring product reaches customers in ideal conditions.

For a producer DEXA is all about providing that enhanced feedback, which in turn could lead to a different payment system within WAMMCO.

"We are in the process of installing hook radio-frequency identification right the way through the whole plant," Mr Davidson said.

"So if we have an electronic ear tag system in the future and we would be in a position to give producers individual carcase feedback.

"From there farmers can make some better genetic decisions and also may be able to change their nutrition or animal management.

"We hope overall it would lead to an increased compliance to our market specifications and if that happens, all involved in the lamb supply chain would benefit."

Mr Davidson added that while everything did sound positive with DEXA, it was important a happy medium was found in lean meat yield.

He said if growers drove the yield too far, it could destroy the eating quality of the product.

"That was one of the issues we flagged with VIAScan," Mr Davidson said.

"With more and more work being done by Murdoch University and other meat scientists around Australia, we soon realised we were driving yield far too highly without having a secondary backup eating quality measure.

"When talking about intramuscular fat (IMF), Australia's lamb average is sitting around 4-4.5 per cent.

"There is now an Australian Sheep Breeding Value (ASBV) for IMF and at the moment there is about 4-4.5 units difference between the absolute top and bottom in terms of IMF in crossbreed sires across Australia."

Mr Davidson said that "there weren't too many sires" with a positive IMF, which was why WAMMCO encouraged growers to pick sires from the top 50th percentile.

"What we also need as a processor is to find a solution, so we can test meat eating quality at chain speed," he said.

"There are a couple of solutions we are looking at that are being used around Australia.

"One of those solutions is a meat eating quality (MEQ) probe as used at Gundagai Meat Processors, New South Wales.

"No cut surface is required with the probe and as results are obtained inside a few seconds thus enabling processors the opportunity to segregate particular carcases before they are boned out.

"Along with the MEQ probe, there are other options - one being a hyper-spectral camera, which is Danish technology, coming out of the pig industry, another is technology used to determine tuna fat levels in Japan - both however require a cut surface.

"In an ideal world business decisions about what happens to a carcase can be determined before it enters the boning room."

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