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SAC Student Cameron Craigie Travels to Denver

Cameron Craigie (opens in new window)

Cameron Craigie, a PHD student at SAC, recently received the highly coveted International Stockmen’s Educational Foundation (ISEF) Travel Fellowship to the 2011 International Livestock Congress in Denver, Colorado. The congress was associated with the 105th National Western Stock Show which runs for 3 weeks every January making it (by the number of animals involved) the world’s largest stock show.

Cameron’s PhD is sponsored by Quality Meat Scotland, but supervised by SAC in conjunction with Massey University in New Zealand, his home country. While the majority of students receiving the Fellowship were from the US, Cameron was in a group of 6 international winners from Iran, Mexico, Canada and Australia. 

At the conference, ‘The Beef Market Place: Strategies for today and tomorrow’, leading academics and industry experts from across the USA covered topics including beef market globalization, how to grow domestic demand for beef, food safety, traceability, an update on current genetic technologies and marketing new cuts of beef. This was ideal for Cameron whose PhD involves an investigation into the potential use of technologies like video image analysis (VIA) and Near Infrared spectroscopy (NIR) for carcass evaluation”. His work, in conjunction with SAC and QMS colleagues, will help inform how these technologies can be used in a value-based marketing system for the Scotch beef and lamb.

“The opportunity to look under the bonnet of meat industries in different countries has been a real eye-opener”, said Cameron Craigie. “The Scottish meat industry has some real strategic advantages, including a simple supply chain, excellent animal traceability and quality assurance schemes”

Students were taken on tour of a case-ready meat processing plant and to the National Cattlemen’s Beef Cattle Association for some lessons in beef tasting, new product development and marketing. The week long programme ended in a careers day where a panel of five key figures in the US livestock industry were put through a Q&A session by the students.


The Fellowships were decided by a multi national committee. It funded airfare and other transportation, hotel and scheduled meals during the International Livestock Congress. The committee considered Scholastic achievement, leadership experiences and letters of recommendation.

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