CT scanning could be used to assess beef carcass quality
A scanning technique used to assess sheep carcasses could be used to accurately quantify the weights of fat, muscle and bone of primal beef joints. And this technique may reduce costs and time of assessing carcass composition in a large number of animals, as is required for the estimation of genetic parameters and in breeding programmes, including progeny tests for carcass quality.
These were the findings of a study into the possible use of X-ray computed tomography (CT), which can be used to take measurements of live sheep to predict carcass composition very accurately, on beef carcasses. Although the limiting size of the CT gantry prevents CT scanning of live beef cattle, beef primal joints are small enough to be scanned.
“So it could be used to quantify beef carcass composition, and provide valuable information for breeding programmes including composition faster than by anatomical dissection,” the SAC’s Elly Navajas told delegates at this year’s British Society of Animal Science’s annual conference.
“The objective of our study was to develop a CT image analysis procedure to assess fat, muscle and bone weights of beef carcasses and to evaluate its accuracy.”
Data used in the study were recorded on seven Aberdeen Angus and 15 Limousin cross-bred steers that were slaughtered in 2006. The left carcass sides were split into 20 primal joints 48 hours after slaughter and vacuum packed. Individual scans of each primal, containing contiguous cross-sectional images (slices) that were 8mm thick, were collected. Later, these joints were fully dissected into fat, muscle and bone.
“And we found that the CT predicted composition of primal beef joints and their dissection values were similar and the accuracy of CT was close to that achieved when predicting sheep carcass composition,” said Dr Navajas.
Presented to the British Society of Animal Science Annual Meeting, March 31 to April 2, 2008, Scarborough, UK.
Full details: Navajas EA, Glasbey CA, McLean KA, Fisher AV, Richardson RI, Ross DW, Hyslop JJ, Simm G and Roehe R: “Beef carcass composition assessed by Xray computed tomography scanning of primal joints.”
Summary (pdf)
PDF of Presentation_045navajas
For further information visit http://www.bsas.org.uk/Publications/Annual_Conference_Proceedings/ or contact BSAS on 0131 445 4508 bsas@sac.ac.uk
