Two partners of the INTAQT project were invited by the organizers of the thirty-second session of the Specialized Section on Standardization of Meat of UNECE – United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. This meeting was held in Geneva, in August.

Jean-François Hocquette from INRAE made a presentation entitled “Use of the UNECE eating quality standards in France and in Europe”, where INTAQT project was mentioned as a major research project to use and to disseminate the UNECE recommendations.

Indeed, several carcass graders from Belgium, Switzerland, Spain and France were trained in Spain in 2022 as part of the INTAQT project to be accredited by the International Meat Research 3G Foundation to assess carcass characteristics according to the common UNECE standards.

In addition, the principles of beef carcass grading according to the UNECE guidelines were briefly described: Carcass assessments must be done in accordance with the Australian Beef Chiller Assessment System (ABCAS) reference standards (Meat, Livestock, Australia & Meat Standards, Australia, 2001), following a benchmark established by the UNECE Bovine Language Standards. Jean-François Hocquette also explained how these guidelines were used by the different partners of the INTAQT project in UK, France, Switzerland, Italy and Spain with the ultimate objective to predict beef eating quality using the Guaranteed Global Grading (3G) model developed by the International Meat 3G Foundation.

Another presentation by Alix Neveu from the International Meat 3G Foundation entitled “UNECE eating quality update”, described the 3G model which is being used by the different partners of the INTAQT project to predict eating quality from beef produced in UK, France, Switzerland, Italy and Spain. This strategy based on carcass assessment using the UNECE recommendations and on the 3G model will allow standardization and compilation of all data in a single database, and then comparison of carcass characteristics and beef eating quality from different cattle types between different livestock systems according to common standard.