New device automatically sorts meat

European meat processing is a multi-billion euro industry, mostly made up of small businesses. Currently, these companies suffer 30-40 % product loss because of meat quality problems, which could be avoided by improving sorting methods.

The EU-funded Q-MEAT (Helping EU processors become competitive using automated and non-contact pigmeat piece quality classification) project aimed to create an automated system to qualify pork meat on the basis of colour and water content. Using analytical techniques such as magnetic induction spectroscopy (MIS) and video image analysis (VIA), the Q-MEAT device is expected to improve productivity by more than 20 %.

MIS can be used to estimate water-holding capacity in biological tissues without touching the sample. Researchers proved that it could be used with pork loins before building a lab-scale prototype MIS device, which was tested successfully.

The other aspect of the Q-MEAT system uses VIA to judge meat quality by its colour. Researchers tested different light sources, and custom-built software to process the data produced by VIA.

Q-MEAT then combined the MIS and VIA systems and used them to evaluate meat quality on a range of pork products. The project built an industrial prototype that was very successful in grouping meat into different quality grades.

The Q-MEAT project has proven that its prototype system works in practice, and will now aim to commercialise the system. Within two years, the Q-MEAT system could be improving productivity and profits in the pork processing sector.