ABP plant to shift to electronic grading from 18 August
Electronic cattle grading will go live in Britain for the first time when ABP – one of the UK’s biggest meat companies – launches visual imaging analysis (VIA) at its Perth plant on 18 August.
The company has said it intends to end manual grading and roll out the technology across all its plants in England. Installation has already started at some and VIA is expected to be up and running at Ellesmere and another two plants before Christmas.
ABP’s six meat plants in Ireland and two in Northern Ireland have been using VIA for three years, in line with all other Irish meat processors.
See more Carcass grading goes automatic
At the launch, the group’s agriculture manager, Stuart Roberts, told industry stakeholders and producer group leaders that ABP had installed the equipment in Perth eight years ago, and described this week’s announcement as “important and long overdue”.
“Unlike in Ireland we’re going it alone here and we know the pressure is on us,” he said. “But we believe this is the way forward. VIA replicates what a human being does but does it in a more consistent way. Whether it’s Christmas Day or mid-summer, it spits out the same result, time and again. It doesn’t matter if you’re in Perth, Northern Ireland or Australia, the results are the same.”
And he appealed to all beef producers to come to the abattoir to view the technology and see their cattle graded.
He added; “We’re disappointed with the low number of producers who currently come in and see their cattle graded. That needs to change. In Northern Ireland, we have farmers queuing up to watch. Every farmer should be doing it.”
Concurrent with the introduction of VIA will be the launch of a new 15-point payment grid, which will refine the premiums and discounts paid for individual cattle. Farmers and producer groups will receive information on the implications of the new grid within the next 10 days, but Mr Roberts made it clear that poorer-quality animals would receive bigger discounts than they do at present.
“We want to reward better cattle and penalise poorer cattle,” added Frank Ross, ABP’s Perth general manager.
Mr Roberts said the technology also gave the industry the ability to challenge the way carcasses have historically been graded.
“The current system is slightly out of date,” he said. “It was ideal when carcasses were being graded for intervention stores, but we need to move on and look at what the market wants today from a carcass, and this technology starts to give us the ability to reward it accordingly.”
NFU Scotland president Nigel Miller welcomed the development and described the use of VIA as an important milestone.
“We’ve been frustrated that it has taken so long,” he said. “It’s vital that we have this in Scotland and the next step is to start using the data that’s collected by VIA. We need to be brave and push on fast.”
And Uel Morton of QMS congratulated the company. “The technology is tried and tested and we’re in catch-up mode here,” he said.
A spokesman for the Scottish government said another two companies were in discussion about licensing VIA at their premises.