Increased supervision of beef factory carcase dressing has been pushed by the farm organisations at every meeting of the beef forum. The most recent meeting was on 6 February and the IFA said after it that a proposal has been made to the Department of Public Expenditure regarding the appointment of Agricultural Officers to monitor classification, trim and weights in the factories.

Prior to the introduction of grading machines in factories, cattle were graded manually by Agricultural Officers (SAOs), employed by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM). This service was provided by the Department but was considered a State aid; factories invested in machines to deliver the grading service and DAFM withdrew to a supervisory role. When carcases were graded manually, the SAO was onsite and viewed every carcase that crossed the scales.

When that service was replaced by machines, the manual observation of every carcase by a non-factory employee ended.

It was replaced by unannounced inspection visits carried out by Department staff who scrutinise the grading performance of the machines and examine the carcases to see that they are dressed to the EU reference specification. In 2017, DAFM officials carried out 662 visits to factories and checked 59,227 cattle.

In Northern Ireland, the grading service was provided by the Livestock and Meat Commission prior to machines being introduced in 2011. Performance of these is carried out by the Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (DAERA), with results published on its website.

The machines are assessed for accuracy on measuring conformation and fat and the factory compliance with correct carcase dressing is also assessed. Results are published under each of these headings every two months for each factory though the factory isn’t identified.

Dressing specification

Carcases are dressed in Irish factories to a standard EU reference specification. This enables cattle prices be collected from each country in the EU and compared knowing that like is being compared with like. There can be small variations to trim in individual countries. Northern Ireland is an example of this. Where this occurs, a coefficient is applied to standardise the carcase to the EU reference specification for price reporting purposes.

There are five critical points when checking that a carcase has been trimmed in the correct manner. These are explained in pictures 1-5, which demonstrate how they should be trimmed as well as an example of how they shouldn’t be.

Images courtesy of DAFM.

Extreme examples

These images are supplied by DAFM and where the trim isn’t correct, they have used extreme examples by way of illustration. It should also be highlighted that these are exceptionally rare but farmers or their agents should be aware of how a carcase should be presented at the scales.

Noncompliance is very much an exception and most DAFM inspection visits checking almost 60,000 cattle last year found full compliance on grading and dressing. However, a more permanent or increased frequency of inspection would give greater farmer confidence.

Perhaps the ideal solution lies in technology.

The current grading machines use old-style analogue technology and, while this is perfectly satisfactory for grading, modern HD or ultra HD should surely enable a more detailed image of carcase dressing be presented.

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