Improving MSA Compliance on King Island - A producer demonstration project

Summary

Across all the available data a dark cutting incidence of 12.4% was indicated in the King Island Beef Brand supply chain.  This would appear unacceptably high and presents a significant cost in terms of direct lost value to the supply chain and restricted access to brand eligible product. 
 
No predictive models with any meaningful significance were able to be developed from the carcase data, excluding those describing dark cutting itself.  
 
A range in dark cutting incidence from 6.8% to 18.7% was observed for individual properties with more than 1000 animals in the grading data.  This is suggestive of some on-farm factors influencing the incidence of dark cutting.  The majority of properties however recorded a dark cutting incidence around the mean. 
 
Despite the observation of property to property differences, an examination of on-farm management practices, with particular reference to the finishing environment immediately prior to consignment to slaughter, was unable to associate currently known causes of dark cutting to the high incidence of dark cutting historically observed. 
 
Equally property/producer case studies of low dark cutting incidence were not able to be reported in any informed way linking management action to lowered incidence of dark cutting. 
 
Any expectation that causal agents be identified and demonstrated in this PDS has instead demonstrated that there is currently insufficient understanding of the issue.   No obvious, systemic causal management, deficiencies or actions, were able to be linked to the high incidence of dark cutting affecting the majority of the supply chain.     
 
The primary outcome from this work is that research into the cause of the prevalence of dark cutting in the King Island beef supply chain is required ahead of any demonstration of on-farm management to reduce its incidence.