The content of unsaturated fatty acids such as oleic acid is increasingly attracting attention as a key characteristic that controls the value and price of branded beef from the viewpoint of beef fat quality. However, the current method of analyzing cross sections of the carcass with each butchering is time and labor consuming. For example, near-infrared spectroscopy is generally used for exposed meat such as the carcass loin cross section, but it has been a challenge to quantify the oleic acid content of subcutaneous fat or marbled beef in deeper locations through the hair and skin of live cattle.

In order to efficiently fatten beef cattle containing high amounts of oleic acid, a method is desired that can continuously, nondestructively, and noninvasively measure oleic acid in the livestock barn from the calf stage to the adult cattle stage just prior to shipment.

Researchers in AIST developed a measurement method of oleic acid in live cattle by magnetic resonance.

A magnetic resonance experiment was conducted on beef fat samples, and it was found that the length of the proton transverse relaxation time is highly correlated with the content of unsaturated fatty acids such as oleic acid in beef fat. This was used to successfully estimate the oleic acid content with an error of 2.2 % from the proton transverse relaxation time of beef fat. The application of this discovery to analysis of data acquired by a magnetic resonance surface scanner in separate development will pave the way to enable nondestructive, noninvasive, in-situ measurement of unsaturated fatty acid content in live beef cattle.