Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Breeders boost eating quality

Neal Wallace
Breeders are responding to customers’ desires and positioning the sheep farmers for the day when processors start grading meat for its eating qualities. Neal Wallace reports.
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Meat processors don’t recognise eating quality yet but a group of ram breeders is preparing for when they do.

Andrew Tripp from Nithdale Station in Southland is involved in the South Island genomic calibration project, which uses DNA testing to let breeders predict terminal sire rams likely to produce offspring with meat that has superior qualities of tenderness and juiciness.

Other partners in the project include Beef + Lamb Genetics, Pamu, AgResearch, Focus Genetics, Kelso, the Premier Suftex group, the Southern Suffolk group and Beltex NZ.

Tripp says measuring and promoting superior eating quality lamb is the next logical step in differentiating NZ lamb and meeting consumer expectations.

“Customers want a great eating experience, meat that is tender, the right pH, with a long shelf life and great colour, hence the focus on meat quality.”

Central to the project is a flock of 900 ewes run near Manapouri in northern Southland, which have been mated to 45 different rams with known genotyped DNA profiles and supplied by breeders around the country.

A genomic SNP chip, which is integral to the process, was developed by FarmIQ and the International Sheep Genomics Consortium. It enabled the gene responsible for meat yield and quality to be identified.

An AgResearch paper written on the trial said genomic predictions for growth, yield and meat quality in terminal sheep sires need more testing to maintain accuracy and validation of those traits and that is done in the project’s flock.

Lambing dates and weights of stock in the trial are recorded to determine exact growth rates and each lamb is tissue sampled at tailing and genotyped.

“When the lambs are processed the team at AgResearch works with the processor to capture a series of measurements to determine the tenderness and intramuscular fat of each lamb along with pH, meat and fat colour and visual marbling,” it said.

Tripp says meat companies such as Alliance are in the process of developing technology to test carcases for eating quality attributes while other groups are using genetics and feed to achieve similar goals as the project.

Four years of performance monitoring confirms selecting for eating quality does not affect breeding progress of other desirable terminal sire traits.

Breeders can focus on the meat-eating quality of their top replacement rams, as he is doing, while ensuring productive traits are not compromised, Tripp said.

“We are making progress in our stud sheep, there is no question.”

Meat quality information is being used to develop a meat quality index for scaling he performance of terminal sires for the specific trait.

Tripp says work is also starting to incorporate eating quality in Sheep Improvement criteria.

“This will enable commercial farmers to breed lambs with better quality meat through buying rams selected for better eating quality.

“Ultimately, the end result is the breeding of the consistently better and more enjoyable eating experience for the consumer.”

Measurable eating quality is another attribute farmers can offer consumers in the face of higher production and compliance costs, extra regulations and competition from artificial proteins and laboratory-grown meat.

“If we market our product as clean and green and environmentally friendly and it is proven to be really good to eat then why wouldn’t people want to buy it?” he said.

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