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CATs For Sheep

An old CAT scanner, originally used to scan humans in Dunedin, is now being used at Lincoln University to identify the country's top sheep, providing information on fat and lean composition without the need to slaughter stock.

"It's like a window to the inside, providing detailed and very useful information on any part of the body," says AgResearch Invermay scientist Dr Neville Jopson who is working to reduce the cost of using this technology and increase its speed and convenience. "It presents a huge scope for understanding how an animal performs, making the ideal of finding the best animal for certain farming situations more attainable."

CAT X-ray mapping can measure fat around organs and the amount of muscle on a carcass, and provide information on individual muscles. For markets demanding meat with fat marbling it is the only way to effectively measure live animals, and it allows live measurement of high value stock for breeding programs, such as the current lean and fat selection project.