MEQ Probe close to making the grade

The company, which is adapting a medical grade laser probe to measure eating quality traits in the red meat industry, say it could be commercially released early next year.

MEQ Probe chief executive officer Jordy Kitschke says there are huge benefits in being able to objectively measure traits such as intramuscular fat in the abattoir, with the probe adding objectivity to the existing visual grading system.

"All food supply chains are undergoing a transformation, consumers are demanding higher quality, consistency, traceability, trust, health benefits and welfare standards.

"It's great to see the red meat industry being on the front foot in building and adopting objective measurement technologies that will underpin this value for the consumer.

"We are seeing more and more Australian companies developing their own brands and moving away from selling meat as a commodity, but we need good measurement tools like this to underpin these brands and guarantee the consumer experience."

The benefits of identifying superior quality carcases could also flow back to producers.

The cutting-edge technology is being tested on carcases at a number of abattoirs across Australia in beef and lamb, in particular at Teys Australia's Naracoorte abattoir.

The hand-held probe, which is inserted into the muscle at the 12th-13th rib on hot carcases, works by sending a beam of light into the meat.

It captures the shape of the reflectance of this light, which, with the help of algorithms, can then predict eating quality traits.

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In October,the company received $500,000 of funding from MLA Donor Company and industry partners to further develop the technology and make it ready for production.

Mr Kitschke says during this phase, along with building the algorithms, they have been working to ensure the MEQ Probe is waterproof, food safe and has the ability to gain results in real time.

"On the fastest chain we have been working on, we were measuring 12 lambs a minute, so one every five seconds," he said.

The laser technology was originally being used by the University of Adelaide's Centre for Nanoscale BioPhotonics for human medicine, scanning patients for breast cancer by testing the pH of cancerous and non-cancerous tissue.

But entrepreneurs Andrew Grant and Remo Carbone were keen to see if it could be applied to the food industry.

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Two-and-a-half years later, MEQ Probe has grown to 12 staff, a mix of full-time and part-time employees, from meat technicians to machine learning engineers.

The team has collected thousands of measurements in abattoirs across the country. This information is used by the MEQ engineers to develop algorithms using machine-based learning.

The company has also recently set up a meat science laboratory at the University of Adelaide's Roseworthy Campus to analyse meat samples and compare the probe results.

Teys chief value chain officer Tom Maguire said the company was pleased to support the work of MEQ.

"Teys, through its value-based marketing initiative, is committed to improving the objectivity, transparency and accuracy of beef grading. While early in its R&D phase, MEQ shows promising potential to contribute to this," he said.

"Being able to objectively measure eating quality traits early in the production process will allow us to ensure we have time to sort beef into the highest value market, improving returns for everyone in the supply chain."

Mr Kitschke was unable to discuss the accuracy of the probe, with the results to be revealed through the MLA project, but he said the progress was pleasing.

"Every week we are seeing an improvement in the performance of the algorithms," he said.

Mr Kitschke is also grateful to industry partners MLA, Teys and the Midfield Group for backing MEQ Probe.

"It's near-impossible to commercialise technology without having great industry partners," he said.

"A lot of people are very keen to get their hands on the technology, and we're working as fast as we can to get it to the industry as quickly as possible."