SFF to pay premium for xray technology

Farmers will be paid a premium for supplying lambs to Silver Fern Farms that meet its target carcass conformation requirements. The move is a result of the co-operative introducing its MVTS X-ray technology in its Finegand, Pareora and Takapau works to provide that conformation information reported the ODT. Chief executive Keith Cooper said meat yield was just part of the carcass conformation formula, and the technology would generate what he called "a carcass performance measurement". He said yield related to the ratio of meat to bone, whereas SFF wanted to pay for the overall quality of the animal and how the meat was distributed over the carcass, but especially the portion of high-paying cuts relative to low-paying cuts. To earn the premium, farmers would have to commit supply to SFF after which all their lambs would be streamed to the three plants initially fitted out with the MVTS technology. Premium payments would be over and above the schedule at that time. Mr Cooper said, at the recent MVTS launch at Pareora, that other carcass conformation predictive systems such as VIAscan only provided an estimate, because it could not see through the carcass like an X-ray. Carcass information was fed into production scheduling to determine the best processing option for each animal and would also to programme robotic processing technology. Scott Technology believes it could have a fully automated lamb-cutting room within five years. Cooper said the system generated a huge amount of information on each lamb which could assist with breeding, management and feeding decisions. He said the system would cost about 15c to 45c a carcass depending on installation costs and plant throughput, but improved meat recovery and matching each lamb to the various markets should increase returns by $2 to $5 a lamb.