Innovation really counts when it works on the plant floor

Making sure animal products meet the highest global standards has been critical to our economy since the first frozen meat exports over 100 years ago. Surprisingly, inspection practices for red meat still mainly rely on sight and smell to check for disease or contamination. That is all about to change with AsureQuality’s development of all new, state-of-the-art Automated Carcass Inspection technology. 

Matt Scott, Inspection Innovation Manager, has been leading the company’s “Future of Meat Inspection” programme of work, aimed at maximising modern tools and technology to ensure meat inspection services support multiple industry objectives and meet changing consumer demands. 

This is a significant step forward for an industry governed by strict food safety regulations.  Installing high-tech equipment into the physical environment of a meat processing plant is also challenging - so meaningful and substantial collaboration was required. 

As the New Zealand Government’s Recognised Agency for meat inspection, AsureQuality was uniquely placed to guide that collaboration, working closely with regulators, industry bodies and unions. 

Over the past year, with support from all stakeholders, the team has developed a proof-of-concept solution for automated image capture alongside an AI assisted model to detect disease and defects in beef carcasses.  

The AI model was trained with input from AsureQuality’s meat inspection experts and tested in plant environments to prove what’s possible, operating in parallel with existing inspection processes to minimise disruption and ensure continued compliance with regulations.  

As with any new innovation, getting the tech to work successfully is just the beginning. The real challenge lies in delivering a practical, commercial solution that can be integrated into real processing environments at scale, and is accepted by regulators and international trading partners.  

Matt Scott says that this is where AsureQuality is especially well-placed to add value, in the application of the tech to the real world.   

“Developing the tech wasn’t the biggest part of the challenge. It’s everything that wraps around it which will ultimately enable integration and scalability - maintaining regulatory compliance, gaining scientific validation for the technology, ensuring international trading partner acceptance, and buy-in from the team working on the plant floor”, says Matt. 

Having tested several different value propositions, the AsureQuality team is taking it further, now focussed on delivering a scalable, AI-assisted meat inspection and trimming guidance system for ovine, aligning with meat industry goals for efficiency, traceability and sustainability. 

Matt says the aim is to add value and ultimately improve food safety.  

“Smarter trimming guidance can help reduce yield loss and provide structured inspection data that can drive training and continuous improvement.”  

The next step is to test international scalability, with Matt sharing progress at the MINTRAC Meat Inspection & Quality Assurance Conference in Queensland this week.