What is MEQ Live?
MEQ Live is a state-of-the-art scanning system that uses ultrasound technology to take real-time scans of live cattle. It captures a picture of key quality characteristics like marbling, rib fat, and eye muscle area, providing us with precise data to predict eating quality, well before the animal’s been processed.
The scan delivers immediate measurements that can be displayed on a screen. While still in the testing phase, once proven the measurements can be used for segmenting cattle before production or integrated into our existing software for production tracking and sales forecasting.
The device can deliver these traits as a point-in-time value and predict marbling up to a month before processing. The future scope of the technology is to provide performance predictions at induction and backgrounding.
What are the benefits?
Stockyard brands are segregated based on eating quality markers including marble score, so this technology, once proven, will allow us a much greater degree of accuracy on our forecasted volumes of products by brand. Our trial will see us using the technology to scan cattle two weeks before production however, as the technology improves, it may have the potential to provide this forecast at the start of the animal’s feeding program.
This has the potential to inform our cattle procurement strategies and allow us to remove underperformers far earlier, so we can provide more space for the elite cattle that make our programs. For our customers, this will mean we can provide you with a more accurate picture of what orders we can fulfil with potentially a 6 -12 month lead time. The use of MEQ Live will also ensure our beef meets the high expectations you have come to expect from our products, even more consistently.
It will also allow us to shorten the feedback loop to our network of producers who, due to our long feeding times, often have to wait 3 years to receive carcass quality feedback on their genetic lines. In turn, they can improve the performance of their herds, and supply better performing cattle into our supply chain, amplifying the benefits of the technology for our beef quality.
The trial has only just begun at our Kerwee Feedlot and we look forward to testing the integration of the technology in our existing forecasting tools. Stay tuned for more updates as the trial progresses.