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By D. Larraine Andrews
It's been almost a year since it received approval for use within the Canadian beef grading system, but the e+v Technology GmbH Beef Instrument Technology is now operational at the XL Beef Lakeside facility in Brooks, Alta.
Prior to approval, the new technology met the criteria of the Canadian Beef Grading Agency and passed intensive testing for use in assessing the quality and yield of carcasses at the plant.
Cindy Delaloye, general manager of the CBGA, says since the grading process no longer relies on the subjective decisions of a human, grading consistency has improved.
The computer vision grading technology allows for several measurements of yield and grade parameters through a stationary machine. It photographs and analyzes the rib eye area – between the twelfth and thirteenth rib – of carcasses as they pass on a moving rail.
Delaloye says a human grader is still required to identify bone ossification, conformation, meat and fat colour and meat consistency.
Since the data is in a digital format, it can be stored in industry databases, such as the new Beef InfoXchange System, or BIXS. Mark Klassen, director of technical services with the Canadian Cattlemen's Association says storage of the information provides potential for use along the entire value chain.
Through the use of the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency identification number, individual carcass performance data using BIXS is collected as a "one-stop shop" for producers. Rob McNabb, general manager of operations with CCA, calls the system the "brass ring" of carcass information, allowing cow-calf producers, feedlot operators and processors to monitor individual animal performance all the way up the chain.
The new technology is also installed in Cargill plants in High River, Alta. and Guelph, Ont., but used only for internal production purposes.
June 1 , 2011 -- Grits ignore rural Ontario on abattoirs
It is an indisputable fact that the Dalton Gang has pretty much ignored rural Ontario during its seven-plus years in power. However, on some files, being ignored would have been better than being put under a Toronto-based microscope. We could have avoided all that meddling based on book learnin' rather than real world experience. Today, the topic is the continuing closure of small abattoirs throughout rural Ontario, due to the twin burdens of onerous regulations and enough paperwork to choke a Clydesdale. Apparently one hand doesn't know what the other one is doing, even within individual Ontario ministries. In this case, the one hand is promoting the local food movement. Farmers are encouraged to sell locally as consumers are being urged to buy from local producers, a la 100-mile diet. But the other hand is forcing the closing of small abattoirs, leaving farmers unable to get meat processed.
May 31, 2011 > Beef Industry News – Groups sue FDA over antibiotics given to livestock
By Lisa M. Keefe on 5/26/2011
Five activist groups have together filed suit against the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Center for Veterinary Medicine, and the directors of each, over the administration of antibiotics to livestock for reasons other than to treat disease or infection, according to court papers.
The addition of low levels of antibiotics to feed of healthy livestock — so-called subtherapeutic use — has been a common practice for more than 50 years. In the lawsuit, the Natural Resources Defense Council Inc., Center for Science in the Public Interest, Food Animal Concerns Trust, Public Citizen Inc. and Union of Concerned Scientists Inc. reference research that indicates the use of antibiotics in livestock may promote bacterial resistance to a number of drugs commonly used to treat ill humans, including penicillins, cephalosporins and aminoglycosides.
The lawsuit cites one of the FDA’s own documents as saying antimicrobial resistance, “and the resulting failure of antimicrobial therapies in humans, is a mounting public health problem of global significance.”
It also states that the FDA “reported last year that livestock grown in the U.S. consumed about 28.6 million pounds of antibiotics and the agency confirmed recently that about 74 [percent] of those antibiotics were administered through feed.” The groups behind the lawsuit point out that the FDA is required by law to withdraw approval for an animal drug if the agency “finds that the drugs is not shown to be safe for the uses for which it was approved,” and say the subtherapeutic administration of antibiotics qualifies. They also note that CSPI and other groups had twice before petitioned the agency to withdraw its approval for low-level dosing of livestock, petitions that were ignored.
UK Minister is hot on COOL
By John Strak on 5/31/2011
The UK’s department of agriculture (Defra) has published the results of a survey of food products’ labelling as part of an investigation of where their ingredients came from or where they were produced. At the Government’s request the food industry put in place voluntary standards to provide clearer country of origin information to consumers in November 2010. The recent survey of over 500 meat and dairy products purchased from the major retailers and a number of independent shops is the first evaluation of country of origin labeling.
For bacon, sausages and other lightly processed meat products, 82 percent had some form of origin labeling, with 67 percent providing information on the origin of the meat ingredient, and 15 percent only listing where the product was manufactured. Nearly one in five didn’t include any origin statement.
More complicated meat products, such as pies and ready meals, showed that 76 percent included some form of origin statement. “Honest food labeling is a priority for me. Consumers want to see clear, honest labels that allow them to make a choice about the standards and origin of their food. They are entitled to believe that if a label says or implies that a product is British, it is British,” said Food Minister Jim Paice.
“The food industry has already taken the initiative on this, but today’s results show there’s still room for improvement. People are increasingly eating out so we’ll work with the catering sector to make sure they get the right information as well. Clearer origin labeling is a key commitment for the government. The voluntary code agreed in November 2010 will reduce confusion in the origin of products and make the British consumer the best informed in Europe."
May 23, 2011 > Beef Industry News – PM
University gets ‘smart’ with beef tracking system,
By Tom Johnston
A new pilot program launched at Michigan State University aims to help consumers trace the origin of the beef they purchase with their smart phones. Michigan is the only state in the nation to have adopted a mandatory livestock traceability system, which requires all cattle to have a radio frequency identification ear tag before leaving their original farm. MSU researchers said they want to expand the system beyond meat processors and refine tracking methods. They’re currently working with small- and medium-sized processors to coordinate barcodes with product.
“By translating RFID ear tags to a barcode, pieces or packages of beef can be labelled with that code, tracing it back to the farm and the individual,” MSU associate animal science professor Dan Buskirk said. He and fellow researchers hope consumers will be able to scan the barcode at kiosks in grocery stores or with a smart-phone application, giving them a direct link to information about the farm of origin.
Full Traceability = Meat Plant Traceability + Livestock Traceability ;
The MSU initiative is obviously years ahead of it's time in the US, as the way sides become quarters and quarters become primals in a HIGH SPEED, SUPER EFFICIENT US beef plant, there is no way to track what kill tag one particular piece of meat comes from unless you are willing to process all the meat from one animal per line before starting another. In any high speed Beef Processing operation this is simply not possible.
MSU will find that only in a very few boutique operations in Europe this is done but at great expense, and Full Traceability is defined, in Australia for example, as only really "Trace Back" to the BATCH of origin as in poultry and pork production. The batch being a day , an hour, a truck load?? ; and is quite misleading; as indicated here, Trace Back to the animal of origin is just not doable in US at this time.
Full Individual Traceability in Meat Plants will be done one day, but not for 10 to 25 more years in the US when the young generation take over and they do not accept the old way of doing business, they expect FULL DISCLOSURE, not controlled exposure, when they will certainly demand full video disclosure of each Beef plant's traceability system on You Tube, for example. Good thinking MSU, but it cant be done in North America at this time.
Full Traceability = Meat Plant Traceability + Livestock Traceability.
May 20, 2011 > Earlier this week, we posted an article titled “Corn-o-phobia,” a somewhat tongue-in-cheek description of chemical analysis for verifying the dietary history of the animal that produced a cut of beef. While the article poked a little fun at the fussiness of some consumers, the issues of traceability and process verification are very real in today’s food industry.
Growing numbers of consumers want details about the meat they purchase. If the label says “natural,” “grass-finished” or “humanely raised,” they want documentation to back up those claims. And the fact is, consumers are in charge. If they want specific, documented attributes in their food, and are willing to pay for them, that’s what they should get.
After the Corn-o-phobia article ran on CattleNetwork.com, we received a note from Iain Green, with Picarro Inc., about a real and practical application of “stable isotope analysis” for meat traceability and process verification. Picarro manufactures analytical testing instruments and processes for, among other things, measuring carbon isotopes in air, water and food.
Picarro’s instruments can do more than verify whether beef comes from an animal that was truly “grass finished.” They can reveal a variety of secrets regarding what, where and when animals were fed, offering a level of traceability beyond that provided by conventional methods. The process also applies to plant-based foods, and can tell, for example, the difference between coffee grown in Brazil from that grown in Costa Rica.
Green says that John Spink, director of the Packaging for Food and Product Protection Initiative at Michigan State University, estimates the cost of fraud to the global food industry at $49 billion. The main issues are, in no particular order: food adulteration for profit, tax and tariff avoidance, brand fraud and competitive fraud.
Radio frequency tagging and barcoding provide a traceability system intended to enable tracking of virtually any food through the production and retail chain, Green says. But the chain of custody has weak points, especially whenever the tag or code is removed from one entity, such as the animal, and a new one added to the next such as the side of beef, and again at the next stage, the retail product.
In contrast, the Picarro technology uses a type of molecular tracking they call “Nature's Barcode.” The process is based on the principle that the carbon-based molecules in water, air and soil are composed of stable isotopes. When plants process carbon dioxide and water through photosynthesis, green explains, they do so with specific signatures of these isotopes dependent on the type of plant and where it was grown. “When animals eat plants, the signature is passed along - so we can differentiate meat from cows that have eaten grass or corn or have been finished on corn.”
Green adds that the molecular data can be used in conjunction with RFID and barcodes so that piece of meat could travel with the isotope value encoded in the existing tag data file. If there was any doubt that the meat had been compromised in any way, the test could be run and the data checked against the known value.
In the Corn-o-phobia article, we speculated that testing of this nature probably would add too much cost to a cut of meat to be practical. But Green says modern technology makes the analysis increasingly cost-effective. In the past, he says, stable-isotope analysis required large, complex instruments costing as much as a half million dollars and requiring extensive training to operate. Picarro, he says, has developed systems that are affordable, compact enough for installation in a small lab and just as powerful as the larger systems.
The operation, he says, is simple. Cut a small piece of meat, put it into an autosampler chamber. The meat is dropped into a 1000 C oven where combustion releases the carbon dioxide and water carrying the same isotopic signatures that were locked into the plants the animal ate. “We read the signature optically using a laser technique and report the isotopic signature of the meat.” The cost, he says, is approximately 50 cents per sample and each sample takes only 10 minutes.
"Food traceability by molecular tracking is a major initiative that is revolutionizing the way in which we track food movement through the complex web of producers, processors shippers and consumers, Green says. “It adds value to every step of the chain, creating a level of security not achievable by mechanical means alone."
So the day is here when you might see a beef label specifying where the animal was raised and what it ate over the course of its life, verified by molecular analysis.
Make mine a Kansas City Strip please, from a steer born on grass, raised on forage and supplements to about 700 pounds, then fed for about 200 days on a high-concentrate diet containing hay, corn and up to 30 percent distillers’ grains. Medium rare. Thank you.
View Power Point slides illustrating the “Nature’s Barcode” process
Visit the Picarro Inc. Web site for more information.
April 21, 2011 > Does It Matter Who Verifies Production-Derived Quality?
Food quality attributes arising from farming methods are of increasing interest to many Canadians, examples include environmentally sustainable production practices, humane animal treatment, organic, etc. The credence nature of these attributes necessitates some form of quality assurance to provide credible signals to consumers that these attributes are present. This paper examines trust in private, third-party, and government organizations to provide credible quality signals for attributes that derive from on-farm production methods, or “production-derived” quality attributes. A nationwide survey reveals that farmer, third-party, and government organizations are similarly trusted to provide accurate information about farming methods, while government standards relating to environmental sustainability were perceived as most effective. Abstract in the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics.
March 4, 2011 > http://www.biobeef.com/ ; Carcass Prediction
A new initiative called " Under the Hide" is being funded by the Ontario Cattlemen's Association and it's just getting underway! Over the next couple of years, up to 15,000 Ontario feedlot cattle are to be ultrasounded on farm and then followed through to slaughter to collect carcass data. At the time of scanning, a DNA sample will be collected from each animal for further Genomics work on carcass epds at the University of Guelph.
For more information or how to get your feedlot included in this project, please contact Jason Koudys at 1 (855) BIO-BEEF (855 246-2333) x303.
Carcass Prediction Ultrasound is a BIO service offered to feedlot and cow-calf-to-finish clients. Using ultrasound technology and a computer model, on-farm producers can make decisions on which cattle best fit into certain markets and when the optimum harvest date would be.
The South West Agricultural Professionals (SWAP) group recently toured Buis Beef; Mike and Joanne Buis used BIO's Carcass Prediction Ultrasound to help them make feedlot management and harvest decisions on their beef operation. To learn more, click here.
Feb 18, 2011 > New developments in technology, traceability and food production, click here.
Jan. 20, 2011 > Ontario Cattle Feeders hold their annual convention in London, Ontario. Click Here To Download A Copy Of Ron Hanson’s Presentation on " Family Structure & Conflict" from The 13th Annual Ontario Cattle Feeders Convention: Multi-Generation Farm Family Beef Cattle Operations: Family Harmony vs. Family Conflicts
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