Carcass machine pays less for steers and heifers

CATTLE farmers in Northern Ireland would have been paid £1.5m less per year for steers and heifers – if the carcass classification machines being tested now were used.

A video image analysis (VIA) machine has been installed and tested for two weeks against the official standard, as represented by a jury of five licensed carcass graders, two from Britain and three from other EU member states (as required by EU legislation for testing mechanical classification).

Manual graders in the North have a five-point scale, and the machine grades on a 15-point scale. But assessors were able to calculate that the machine effect is an overall average reduction in the combined steer-heifer price of 1.5p/kg.