The Use of Imaging Technologies to Improve the Flavor of Lamb
A few weeks ago while attending the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) World Congress in Florence, I had some of the best lamb I have ever tasted at a recommended restaurant. So good, in fact, that the local chefs ate there as well at the end of their evening. It turned out the restauranteur owned a sheep farm.
This is why a recent BBC news post on the use of mobile CT imaging scans to improve the quality of sheep flocks in Nottinghamshire caught my attention. Farmers are putting sedated sheep into a mobile imaging scanner to determine their percentage of body fat. The aim is to speed up natural selection by breeding animals for their leanness; less fatty meat is more saleable.
My initial thought is that dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) could provide a more cost effective way of evaluating body composition. While CT can give a volume of fat in particular body regions, DXA can provide a total body lean/fat ratio. Research by Pierce et al., in Australia has shown that DXA measurements of fat in sheep carcasses can be well predicted from measurements in live sheep (read the full abstract here). In other words, what you see in the live sheep is what people get on the dinner table!
A DXA scan would also provide significantly less radiation to the sheep than CT. In humans, a CT scan of the abdomen and pelvis gives a radiation dosage of approximately 7.6 mSv, compared to 0.001 mSv for a bone densitometry DXA.
Sheep are also interesting models for osteoarthritis evaluation. Purebred Merino sheep have been used to monitor cartilage metabolism and the effects of drugs on anti-inflammatory mediators (read the full abstract here).
Please contact me if you would like the name of the restaurant I visited in Florence.
Sources:
1. http://www.iofwco-ecceo10.org/
2. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/nottinghamshire/8690897.stm
3. Dual X-ray absorptiometry accurately predicts carcass composition from live sheep and chemical composition of live and dead sheep
Meat Science, Volume 81, Issue 1, January 2009, Pages 285-293
K.L. Pearce, M. Ferguson, G. Gardner, N. Smith, J. Greef and D.W. Pethick
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.meatsci.2008.08.004
4. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9296080