Teys manager: 55pc of kill cattle could earn more

"State governments have stepped away from extension with farmers, so what we're doing as an industry is filling that gap by providing that information back to producers," he told the ICMJ Northern Conference in Rockhampton last week.

He highlighted there were significant variations in value between the best and worst animals in a producer's draft due to factors such as quality, pathology, and carcase yield.

"What you find is that when you kill an animal, we find, there's often in real value terms, difference of about $600 between the best animal in a farmer's draft of cattle that they send you and the worst animal.

"What we tend to find is that we kill 1.5 million cattle a year and we get about 45pc of them from 330 PICs, those are big family companies, corporate entities, they're well-run operations.

"We get the other 55pc from 7000 PICs, it's those 7000 that need the help."

He said feedback on lean meat yield and MSA was being provided to producers, with some producers consistently landing in the higher specs, whereas other drafts of cattle were extremely variable.

He indicated producers consistently landing in the high specs had interpreted the data received by processors and applied it on-farm.

"The problem is from their perspective is that it's costing them the same to produce every animal, but they're worth vastly different values.

"From our point of view it cost the same amount to process them regardless of their value, so in a sense there's fixed costs."

He mentioned companies like Black Box Co., which aimed at presenting the information to producers in a format that was meaningful and actionable.

He said industry was also being challenged to find a ways to maximise the value of everything harvested and sold, including offal, hide, and fecal blood. While compensating producers accordingly.

He explained that currently, payments were often based on average prices and values, which may not accurately reflect the actual differences in quality and value between individual animals.

Dr Lanbridge said there was a misconception that Australia exported whole beef carcases, but the reality was that parts of a single carcase could go to 30 different countries.

"Most rib eyes are consumed in Australia, most trimmings go to the US for hamburgers. The best price for tongues last week was in Japan, the best price for livers is in Egypt," he said.

He said to get the maximum value for each product sold also meant accessing as many markets.

"We may not use some markets at certain times, but we eventually will due to fluctuating things like exchange rates and political dramas, like what we've seen with China.

"Markets can change very quickly and be entirely out of our control."

He said another way Australia could value-add to remain competitive globally considering we had a relatively small herd was through initiatives like organics, grass-fed, or other sustainable practices, and reward producers for implementing them.

Dr Langbridge spoke about the work Teys and other processors were doing to improve carcase measurement and efficiency with emerging technologies.

"These measurement technologies give highly repeatable results," he said.

"Some of these technologies are applicable on farm as well."

Teys has a Dual Energy X Ray Absorptiometry (DEXA) prototype installed at their Rockhampton facility.

Dr Langbridge said the carcase and primal cut yield data was being used to develop preliminary algorithms that could be used to predict yield from scanned carcases.

He said Teys was also looking into using a German designed 2D carcase grading camera to predict yield.

"We actually think that's going to be always as accurate as the x-ray machine, at about a tenth of the cost and allows us to get information back to the farmers earlier."

He also mentioned the MEQ Probe, which is robust and ergonomic meat eating quality assessment tool used to predict marble score in beef and IMF percentage in lamb.

It speeds up the chain process and can measure MSA marble score in hot beef carcases.

"These technologies will still need to be used by a grader. There are other things we still need like fat distribution, ossification, pH decline, and temperature.

"But having said that ossification and fat distribution can probably be done by AI over time and I think there are projects looking at that."

He also spoke about nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), a medical imaging technique being applied to meat quality assessment.

"That technology doesn't require penetration so it can be done in live animals as well, that will also give us marbling, rib eye area and subcutaneous rib fats, we think," he said.

He said on farm, NMR tech could look like a box hanging from a crush above an animal.

"You'll just pull it down onto it and the idea with these technologies is that you don't need people to interpret it, the machine will do that for you, so it will give you fairly consistent results."

He also discussed the potential for feedlots to virtually optimise feeding practices to achieve specs earlier.

"To call them grain-fed you've got to have them on feed for 100 days, but the challenge will be if I've got them on grain for 60 days but can show they meet the specs, can I pull them off and still call them grain-fed?"

He said optimising feeding practices could reduce the need for excessive feed, promoting sustainability.

He also noted the inefficiency of over-fattening animals, as excess fat was trimmed off at the meatworks and processed into tallow, which consumed additional energy.

Dr Langbridge also said they were trying to improve offal pathology, seeking to automate the inspection process, using various different light spectrum, CCTV, and AI.