OPTI-BEEF: precision agricultural solution to monitor lifetime productivity and product quality

“目前英国牛肉行业存在广泛的低效率。生产者通常通过眼睛评估动物的表现，并经常将它们留在农场太长时间，导致动物变得过于肥胖。这导致可变农场成本增加，牛肉精加工单位的年产能减少，以及为胴体支付的次优价格-对于每年生产300头动物的精加工单位来说，这相当于11，400英镑的成本。过胖的动物也增加了屠宰场的初级加工成本，并对每公斤产品产生更大的环境影响。向生产商支付的牛肉胴体价格也主要是通过眼睛主观评估的。由于对胴体评估的可靠性缺乏信心，因此很难就反映胴体真实价值的基于质量的付款达成一致。该项目旨在开发农场和屠宰场技术，以自动化和优化农场屠宰和胴体评估的动物选择。该项目将整合从个体肉牛整个生命周期（从小牛到胴体）收集的自动化数据，以创建一个增强的决策支持平台，从而实现英国牛肉供应链的现代化并提高效率。"

"There is currently extensive inefficiency in the UK beef sector. Producers routinely assess the performance of their animals by eye and frequently retain them on farm too long, resulting in animals becoming too fat. This leads to increased variable farm costs, reduced annual capacity of beef finishing units and sub-optimal price paid for carcasses -- for a finishing unit producing 300 animals per year this equates to a cost of £11,400\. Over-fat animals also increase the primary processing costs for abattoirs and have a higher environmental impact per kg of product produced.The price paid to the producer for a beef carcass is also predominantly assessed subjectively by eye. Lack of confidence in the reliability of carcass evaluation makes it difficult to agree quality-based payments that reflect the true value of carcasses.This project aims to develop on-farm and in abattoir technologies to automate and optimise on-farm selection of animals for slaughter and carcass evaluation. The project will integrate automated data gathered across the whole life of individual beef animals (from calf to carcass) to create an enhanced decision support platform to modernise and drive efficiency improvements across the UK beef supply chain."