PREDICTING THE BONING ROOM VALUE OF LAMB CARCASES FROM SELECTED INDICATOR CUTS

摘要

IntroductionLean meat yield has always been considered important across all sectors of the lamb industry. Processors in particular have regarded yield of saleable product highly but find it difficult to measure under commercial boning room conditions. VIAScan_ has been developed to predict yield based on a digitized carcase image at the end of the slaughter chain. Hopkins and Fogarty (1998) showed from a research perspective measurement of carcase fat depth (GR) and eye muscle area (EMA) will be the most accurate way of obtaining an estimate of yield. From a commercial perspective however, EMA has not been able to be measured on the carcase. To obtain these measurements in a commercial boning room the primal cuts need to be linked to an individual carcase. This can be achieved using a radio frequency identification (RFID) tag reading system which will link primal cut and carcase information to the live animal. This will improve boning yield monitoring and producer feedback. It would be necessary to do this calibration for individual boning rooms based on the suite of primal cuts they were generating with periodic bone-outs, however it is a slow and labour intensive process.