Electronics export

Press, 24 September 1983, Page 20

Electronics export

The Swedish meat industry has chosen a New Zealand electronic carcasegrading system in a quest to raise the industry’s standards.

Sweden, which has the world’s largest agricultural research centre in the world, will spend more than $1.25 million buying the Hennessy Carcase Grading System.

Mr Brian Hennessy, the designer of the system, earlier won an award for designing a fat-depth indicator. He says he wondered why the meat industry measured fat when it sold meat. The basic reason it appeared, was that it had always done so.

He decided a new probe should be developed, identifying the farmer producing higher quality, meatier carcases, to make the industry more cost efficient and raise the demand for and value of the product. This probe is the base of the Hennessy grading system. The Hennessy probe measures all the carcase tissue between the surface and rib cavity, displaying the fat thickness and muscle thickness, as well as calculating and displaying the lean meat percentage and class of the carcase in one second.

The probe can be connected to printers, displays,

branders, weight scales, keyboard terminals, rail control units, and computers.

The Swedish contract requires the equipment to be supplied for their meat processing plants before the end of this year.

The first reports on a probe designed for New Zealand lamb, say the Hennessy device is the most efficient device that has been tested. Subject to trials in the hands of qualified graders trained to use them, 40 instruments are expected to be bought initially, and all export-lamb works are expected to be using them by the end of next year.