COLES has revealed to Gippsland producers it applies five different criteria, with three hundred different ways, of cutting up a beef carcase.
As part of the annual Lardner Park steer trials, Coles managers and JBS Farm Assurance and Supply Chain manager Mark Inglis spoke about their requirements, for cattle.
Coles National Production manager, beef, Peter Smith, cut up a carcase in front of guests, explaining how the animal was broken down for sale.
“Depending on how we break up the carcase, whether this is going for a roast, or stir fry, will alter the amount of trim we are expecting to get out of the carcase,” Mr Smith said.
“From a measuring point of view, we measure all of this, every day, across 11,000 bodies a week.
“We are in about point one percent from our expected yield outcomes, even with all these different options, by tracking, tracing, measuring, the boners, the slicers, the waste – that’s what we do every day.”
National Livestock manager Steven Rennie said Coles produced a cut plan, daily and weekly, for the different type of cattle for the Graze, butcher and Coles Finest brands.
There were five different carcase criteria, which included 300 different cuts.
“One of the things you learn in the (Lardner Park) steer trial is we have a carcase weight. If we have cattle that are too heavy, they generate too much meat and we won’t have a plan for it,” Mr Rennie said.
The ideal weight for Coles was a 260kg carcase, while JBS would take slightly heavier animals.
Mr Smith said such a carcase would “pack out” about 74 per cent, including some bone-in cuts, such as spare ribs.
JBS Farm Assurance and Supply Chain manager Mark Inglis showed how Meat Standards Australia (MSA) grading worked, measuring ph, marbling, meat and fat color, rib fat and eye muscle area and ossification, which measured the animal’s maturity.
“Most of you guys, in the field, you look at an animal in regards to dentition, to see how its ageing, and there is a correlation between ossification and dentition,” Mr Inglis said.
“Down here, particularly in Gippsland where you are green most of the year, you can certainly have older animals, which will have a lower ossification and a higher dentition. Ossifocation is a more accurate measure of an eating quality outcome, or maturity, of an animal.”
He said the yearling carcase he had supplied had a high ph, which mean it would not grade.
“This is one I have just grabbed, it is a shorter type animal to fit in the chiller from a contract kill, and it won’t make 5.7ph,” Mr Inglis said.
He said ph related to nutrition, on the farm.
“In the lead up to slaughter, if you don’t get that right and the animals are stressed and the glycogen leaks out, you don’t get enough glycogen at the point of slaughter, to convert to lactic acid, to drive the ph down.”
He said from a meat color perspective, “the animal is okay – because that’s what consumers are looking at. What is the issue with it? It has high ph, so it will still be tough.”
Mr Inglis said the higher the tropical breed content of an animal, the lower the MSA index.
“You can imagine and animal in Queensland that has to walk 20kilometres to get a drink and 20kms back to get a feed, you want their muscles not to break down – so they have higher amounts of the enzyme calpastatin in them. So once we kill them, and try and age that product out, because their muscle fibres don’t break down, they are a lot tougher.”
