“Lost on the journey – does eating quality of beef matter?” is the title of a virtual farm walk taking place on Monday ,October 19, at 8:00pm.
This is the sixth online event in the successful series hosted by AgriSearch for the European Innovation Initiative (EIT) partners.
The partners are ABP and John Deere along with Queen’s University and the University of Reading.
The guest speaker for this session is Nigel Scollan, Director of the Institute for Global Food Security and a Professor of Animal Science at Queen’s University, Belfast.
His career journey has taken him from his home county of Fermanagh to Edinburgh, Canada, Wales and back to Northern Ireland.
Whilst working for Aberystwyth University he became very focused on the enterprise agenda and how closer relationships could be nurtured between academia and business in the agri-food sector.
He firmly believes we should be conducting excellence in research but research which is relevant to address major challenges in society.
In the webinar and discussion Nigel will highlight key challenges in red meat and will focus on product quality and in particular eating quality of beef and approaches to measuring “quality”.
The opportunities for new payment systems based on meat yield and eating quality will be considered and consumer willingness-to-pay for quality will be discussed.
The farmers ambassadors for this project, Sam Chesney from Co. Down and James Evans from Shropshire, both suppliers to ABP, will also speak on the steps they are taking on farm to address eating quality and the challenges still faced.
