Centre for Genetic Improvement of Livestock 
 Update 2000

Testing for the Best
by
Ian Lang

 

 

Information from packing plants can help assess beef sires


Prof. Ira Mandell and colleagues are grading selected cuts of beef from processed steers and tracing them back to their original sire.  The researchers hope to rank beef sires according to the tenderness of meat produced by their offspring.

 

 

Departing from tradition, two University of Guelph researchers are taking beef sire progeny testing right into the packing plant

By grading selected cuts of meat from processed steers and tracing them back to their original sire, Profs. Jim Wilton and Ira Mandell, Animal and Poultry Science, along with technicians Chris Haworth and Cheryl Campbell, hope to rank beef sires according to the tenderness of meat produced by their offspring. They say this will reduce the need for costly and specialized progeny tests for improving customer satisfaction.

Mandell says the first step is to determine how much genetics affects beef tenderness.

"Progeny from a single sire can arrive at the packing plant from a wide range of management practices and environments," says Mandell. "We want to know if tenderness is consistent among these individuals or whether management has overshadowed the genetic influence."

Typically, progeny tests are organized by breed associations, which take a sampling of the bull's progeny, rear them separately to control for environmental influence, and grade them for traits such as lean yield, marbling, colour and other factors that make the product more appealing to the consumer.

Applying the Criteria

Mandell is applying these same criteria to cuts from the packing plant, using a manual grading procedure that emulates a soon-to-be-available Computer Vision System (CVS) grading developed by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, in Lacombe, Alberta. This automated grading system has the potential to enable sire testing using packing plant information, a proposition that Mandell wants to explore.

 The research project focuses on evaluating beef from two parts of the carcass, the ribeye muscle cut from the rib and the 'eye-of-round' muscle cut from the hip. Steaks from the two muscles are cooked and then evaluated for tenderness, using an instrument that measures the force needed to cut through the muscle fibres, providing the user with a numerical tenderness score.

Mandell hopes that his repeated evaluations will develop into a clear picture of the relative importance of genetics and management on beef tenderness...and ultimately develop the potential for conducting sire assessment from information gathered at the packing plant.

"Our ability to accurately choose sires that lead to increasingly higher meat quality will have a strong impact on consumers," says Mandell. "Tender steaks lead to a greater overall eating experience."

This research is supported by the Ontario Cattlemen's Association and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.