One hundred-plus years in Gundagai’s meat industry all started with a butchery apprenticeship. Will Barton’s grandfather Fred made a career choice in 1919, which resulted in shopfronts, the establishment of Gundagai Meat Processors in 1974, and now Gundagai Lamb — a gamechanger in the industry.
Australia has access to leading technology when it comes to meat processing, but few proteins benefit from it, and none more so than beef. Barton wanted more for the lamb sector, which led to a major investment that changed the landscape for good. Hospitality speaks to the CEO about processing carcasses with state-of-the art technology and machinery, developing the GLQ scoring system, and providing invaluable data to farmers.
Gundagai Meat Processors made a decision to focus on lamb at the turn of the century, which came from an idea to do one thing only and do it well. “There was an opportunity to do lamb better,” says CEO Will Barton. “The lamb industry had not progressed in the same way beef had. 30 years ago, the beef industry went through a revolution where carcasses started to be graded and now it’s hard to get a bad steak in Australia because of that knowledge. For a long time, that grading technology was not available for lamb.”
But that all changed in 2020 when Barton connected with Remo Carbone from MEQ Probe, a company that creates data solutions to ‘optimise the global red meat industry’. “We put our heads together and decided to partner up to develop the technology,” says Barton. Things moved quickly. MEQ Probe created machine learning based on its access to Gundagai Lamb’s meat-processing facility. The tech business was so invested in the potential of its work that it even moved its head office to Gundagai. “It came from a goal to further the industry, improve, and take advantage of technology that the rest of the industry didn’t seem to be getting a hold of,” says Barton.
So how does it all work and what exactly is this technology? When lambs come into the facility, the carcasses have already been prepared to Aus-Meat standards. Each loin is probed to determine the level of marbling before being weighed and put through a dual-energy X-ray machine “that is configured for carcasses to move through continually”, says Barton. “We know the percentage of the lean meat yield from the X ray technology.” A meat inspector then looks at the offal and inspects the carcasses to identify any animal health issues.
Each carcass is scored according to the GLQ measuring system, with a score of five and above attracting a bonus of 80 cents per kilogram. A five-plus carcass has a higher lean meat yield with no excess fat and no waste as well as higher intramuscular fat aka marbling. “It is based on a proprietary algorithm we have developed,” says Barton. “It encourages above average marbling without over-fattening. Every product has been measured objectively using science — not with one eye closed and a thumb in the air.”
Gundagai Lamb processes lambs from around 240 suppliers. “Every year we set a target to get more and more local lambs,” says Barton. Last year, 50 per cent of processed lambs were raised within 100km of Gundagai and 76 per cent within 200km — the rest came from within 400km. The farmer demand for data is incredibly high, with one producer driving lambs all the way from South Australia to be processed at the facility. “When you send a lamb to a processor, they tell you how heavy the carcass was,” says Barton. “We tell them that, but then we also tell them the percentage of lean meat yield, the level of marbling, and if the animal had any health issues or carcass defects.”
The feedback is unique, and most importantly, detailed. Farmers can log into an interactive portal after 5pm each day and access information about the carcasses that were processed just hours before. The constant feed of information allows farmers to identify any issues in their practices from feed quantity to the performance of certain breeds, most of which are Merino or Merino crosses. “They can see whether their decisions around genetics have paid off and if they have met the nutritional needs of the animal,” says Barton. “They also see how many lambs made the bonus category and can run comparisons against other lots they have sent in. This information alone is motivation for farmers who are as passionate as we are.”
Along with consistency and reliability of product, sustainability is another benefit that has come from the implementation of the meat-processing technology. Barton says it takes six times the amount of grass to create a kilogram of fat as it does a kilogram of meat. Once a lamb grows to the point where it is ready to be slaughtered, it will still consume grass, but only put on fat, which is removed during processing. “Being able to tell a farmer when an animal is getting too fat is critical for sustainability,” says Barton. “Farmers can then reduce the amount of grass which can instead be used to grow more lambs.”
Gundagai Lamb supplies a range of leading chefs across the country include Clare Smyth from Oncore in Sydney and Jason Staudt from Stokehouse in Melbourne, as well as restaurants abroad. The products are more expensive than others on the market, but Barton says it all boils down to consistency. “When you buy a box of lamb from any other brand, it will be a mix of good and bad because they can’t measure the meat yield,” he says. “It could have low marbling; some could be fatty… so the pressure is on the chef to make sure they prepare the cuts as carefully as possible to overcome the variability in the raw material. But if you remove those variabilities, a chef can prepare the product with much more confidence.”
Stokehouse Executive Chef Jason Staudt previously steered away from putting lamb on event menus due to the unreliability of the protein, but that all changed when he began working with Gundagai Lamb. “Now he puts our lamb on at the Australian Open because he knows its repeatable,” says Barton. “It’s about eating high quality as much as it is about consistency, which is what foodservice loves.”
But the product isn’t just for the topend of the dining sector. There are a wide variety of cuts available beyond the highly coveted rack that perform just as well. Barton mentions a rib set as well as leg primals and shoulder meat as some of the most underrated options. “If you get a GLQ5+ rib set or rib plate, the product is amazing,” he says. “The rib set has a level of intramuscular fat. The knuckle or the round are good as well. All the eating quality testing has been done in Australia. If a chef is innovative and wants to try something new, there are many cuts beyond your typical fine-dining options.”
It’s been just four years since Gundagai Lamb implemented its new technology, and the business has been slowly but surely growing ever since. Recognition by a chef like Clare Smyth is not to be taken lightly and neither is the feedback the data provides to the hundreds of lamb farmers the business works with.
Barton set out to progress the lamb sector, and the proof is in the number of GLQ5+ carcasses now coming through the facility, which means the processes are working from the top down. Farmers have taken the feedback on board and changed their own systems, but the goal remains the same — reliability. “We aren’t trying to be the Wagyu of lamb, which is a tag we often get because most consumers understand it and know it,” says Barton. “We are just trying to be above average and consistent.”
