Day 3 started with Dr Andrew Cromie from ICBF in Ireland giving a talk about global or combined genetic evaluations. Most producers want to know who the best animal in the world is, for a specific trait. This can only be achieved by combining data into a genetic evaluation he said. Andrew also mentioned that about 2.5 million calves are born annually in Ireland, and about 1 million (15%) of the country’s 6.5 million cat-tle have already been genotyped. The long-term goal aim is for the country’s entire calf crop to be recorded on the database within the next five years. This will promote great value for genetic advancement and im-prove traceability.
Another congress highlight was the comparison of dif-ferent technologies for carcass scanning. MIJ Japan has joined forces with the Australian Wagyu industry to accelerate the development of new digital platforms. Over the past two years, more than 20,000 carcasses have been analysed to develop a new, electronic, cloud-based grading system. A new phone APP has recently been launched and was demonstrated.
Mr. Darren and Mrs. Melanie Hamblin have been farming 6,000 purebred Wagyu cattle on 18,600 acres in Queensland, Australia for the past twenty years. They have developed the Masterbeef management program with which they can store accurate recordings of carcass data on a cloud-based database, and take photos of the ribeye. The camera is a smartphone ap-plication that is already used by more than a hundred registered users of 47 companies in ten countries.
Mr. Horst Eger, managing director of E&V Technolo-gy in Germany, said their VBS2000 camera grading system is installed at the end of an abattoir line. The latest, customized model can evaluate up to 450 beef carcasses per hour. They have also recently released a new product that uses a phone application. E&V tech-nologies works closely with the USDA in America and the MLA in Australia on camera accreditation.
The congress ended with various panel discussions that included a discussion on certification programs and genetic evaluation programs. All the keynote speakers were pre-recorded and the panel discussions were live. The congress will be available online until the end of the year at the https://www.crowdcast.io/e/wagyu-world-congress website. The World Wagyu Forum will meet before the end of the year and it is envisaged that they will also form a World technical committee.
