AMSA is pleased to announce, Drs. Nuria Prieto, Mohammed Kamruzzaman, and Chris Calkins will be the featured speakers in the symposium entitled “Sensors for Monitoring Quality and Safety of Meat and Meat Products in Supply Chain” on Wednesday, August 18, 2021 during the 74th AMSA Reciprocal Meat Conference (RMC) hybrid meeting. This session will be sponsored by American Foods Group. 

Dr. Nuria Prieto, Meat Quality and Sensory Chemometrics Research Scientist at the Lacombe Research and Development Centre of the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, will kick off this keynote session with a talk titled “Prediction of Carcass, Meat and Fat Quality Using Sensing Technologies.” Meat consumption patterns are continuously evolving in our societies shifting preferences and consumer purchase behavior. Consumers’ demand for quality and competition for the global market have increased interest in novel technologies to guarantee quality in meat production and provide a better understanding of the livestock products and markets trends. Dr. Prieto will focus on new and emerging robust sensing technologies for prediction of carcass, meat, and fat quality, which play an important role in ensuring a more resilient meat value chain and satisfying consumer demands and needs.

Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dr. Mohammed Kamruzzaman, will continue this session with a talk titled “Fraud Detection in Meat Using Hyperspectral Imaging.” Hyperspectral imaging collects information from across the electromagnetic spectrum with the goal of obtaining a spectrum for each pixel and identifying objects of interest. In his talk Dr. Kamruzzaman will cover the benefits and application of hyperspectral imaging in meat fraud detection as well as methods used for image acquisition and data extraction. Challenges, opportunities, and future trends for this technique will also be discussed. 

Dr. Chris Calkins, Professor of Animal Sciences at the University of Nebraska, will wrap up this this session discussing “Digital Image Sensing of Beef Quality.” TenderSpec utilizes spectral evaluation technology to create a high-quality image that can be used to evaluate the ribeye muscle and evaluate tenderness among other important attributes. By placing the device on the ribeye, an image is taken of the visible and the near-infrared regions of the light spectrum. During this talk Dr. Calkins will discuss the TenderSpec system, other imaging strategies including hyperspectral and multispectral technologies, and quality traits of interest. He will also cover technical challenges of the system and current research results. 

AMSA is an organization recognized for its unmatched competence and commitment to attracting and developing meat industry leaders and providing science-based meat research and information. For more information, please visit www.meatscience.org/rmc or contact Deidrea Mabry 1-800-517-AMSA ext. 12. 

Source: AMSA