The future of beef is bioactive

Finicky beefeater Jack Sprat and his lipophilic wife would be amazed at what the meat industry is doing these days with the bits neither would eat.

There's a booming international market developing for 'bioactives' -- high-value extracts from low-value abattoir wastes like cattle blood, cartilage and digestive enzymes, says Christine Raward, of Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA).

In Townsville this week, Raward, MLA's client services general manager, told beef producers that bioactives represent a major commercial opportunity for the Australian industry.

The global market for pharmaceuticals and neutraceuticals -- therapeutic additives to food products -- is likely to grow at 300 per cent per year for the next few years, to an ultimate annual value of $1 billion, Raward said.

The dairy industry currently accounts for 60 per cent of the bioactives market, with products such as wound-healing extracts from milk, and a casein-derived peptide that inhibits and repairs tooth decay.

The Australian red-meat industry's production of bioactives is currently worth only $2.5 million.

But Raward says MLA is now working with the red meat industry to develop bioactive extracts, for example, chondroitin sulphate -- extracted from beef and sheep cartilage -- is being sold as a rival to shark cartilage for treating rheumatoid arthritis and its anti-cancer properties are also being investigated.

MLA is working with several Australian companies to develop commercial products, including a Tasmanian company that is producing a protein product called LipoMate, used by pharmaceutical industry in cell-culture media for biological therapeutics.

LipoMate is a lipoprotein extract from bovine blood -- Raward said MLA has been partnering the Tasmanian company to develop a new extraction and processing technique that will avoid royalty payments to a US rival.

LipoMate sells for $1500 a litre and it requires the blood of only two beef carcasses to produce a litre of Lipomate, potentially adding $750 to the value of each carcass.

Raward said the projected value of LipoMate sales next year was $32 million -- "And this is just one example of the high-value, bioactive protein products that can be produced."

She said the MLA had several other collaborative projects with Australian companies, but could not describe them because of commercial confidentiality.

"There are two reasons why we have been driving this market heavily in recent years," she said.

"First, because of the mad cow disease epidemic in the UK and Europe, Australia and New Zealand are now seen as preferred suppliers for bioactives from beef, in cases where there is no alternative to the animal-derived product.

"The Europeans aren't buying any meat-derived products in the northern hemisphere, so it's a big opportunity for Australia. Blood, in particular, is a potentially huge source of bioactives.

"Second, until now, the technology hasn't been particularly commercial viable or scaleable for bulk production, but that's changing. Some recent successful developments in the dairy industry show it can be done."

Raward said that while there were commercial opportunities for high-value bioactives, they were not for everyone, and involved significant risks.

MLA was working with the industry to ensure these challenges were met, by integrating traceability systems to include co-products, promoting Australia's clean livestock health status, and building networks between potential partners and international customers.