Research looking at verifying the production system of origin for grass- and grain-fed beef is heating up after a promising initial phase.
NSW Department of Primary Industries meat researcher, Dr Steph Fowler, and Charles Sturt University masters student, Bridgette Logan, are in Queensland this week visiting Teys Australia plants to collect data from northern cattle.
Dr Fowler said the Meat and Livestock Australia-supported project was testing whether forensic laser technologies could confirm the production systems of beef for grain- or grass-fed brands to ensure market access and provide a scientific method for verification of premium beef products.
“Around the world, beef from animals fed grain diets and grass-only diets both attract a premium price due to their flavours and eating quality,” she said.
“Australian beef is no different, but this premium price for grass-fed products means that sometimes product substitution or adulteration and food fraud occurs, which is a concern in some of our major export markets.
“We know that there are some inherent differences between grass- and grain-fed beef, so we're looking at whether or not spectroscopic technologies can tell us that and provide scientific evidence to support the current auditing processes, particularly for premium grass-fed beef products.”
Visiting the Queensland plants comes after spending time in plants in southern Australia, including Wagga Wagga and Victoria.
“We are going all over the country,” Dr Fowler said.
“One of the biggest things is just to make sure that if we can predict it or we can verify that it meets the feeding requirements, and we need to make sure that that's going to stack up for the entire of the Australian beef production system because there are so many varied production systems as you move across Australia.
“We’ve done an initial phase that has come up very promising, and now we're getting numbers from various systems and making sure that what we found in the first phase really does stack up.”
Dr Fowler said over the next year or so the project would continue this kind of model building.
“We’ve got to verify that the model stacks up, so we’ll continue collecting more samples, more unknown samples, and then once we have a model which stacks up it’ll go into commercialisation,” she said.
“This will be a tool that beef processors around Australia will have access to, and they'll be able to have one of these devices there, have a grader or somebody use it on the carcasses, and then it'll give them a tick or a cross that they can then verify that within their supply chains.”
Dr Fowler said she was excited to be able to conduct this research, which will benefit the Australian industry and reduce the costs associated with auditing grass-fed beef products.
“It’s great to be out working closely with industry with something that can really have some impact.”
