The global red meat industry generates more than $1 trillion in annual revenue and supports millions of producers, processors, and consumers around the world. But it remains one of the few major industries that still relies on manual inspection and subjective grading, systems that rely on the human eye rather than data.
The MEQ solution was created to solve that. The company has built a suite of technologies that use images and artificial intelligence to objectively assess meat quality and yield in real time.
Today, the startup raised $15 million in Series A funding from Insight Partners to accelerate its efforts to transform the way meat quality is measured and evaluated across the global supply chain.
Becoming the world authority in objectively measuring meat quality and yield
Remo Carbone founded MEQ Solutions with a small team of physicists, meat scientists, and engineers who wanted to modernize a supply chain that had relied primarily on feel and intuition for decades.
Carbone speaks TFN“By digging deeper into agriculture, we saw an opportunity to make an impactful difference and build a company in an industry that is underserved by the global innovation community.”
MEQ's platform includes MEQ Probe, MEQ Camera, MEQ Live, and MEQ Insight, technologies that work together to provide real-time feedback on quality and yield from the paddock to the shop floor. In fact, the company's MEQ camera recently became the first video-based system to be certified by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) for beef grading.
Carbone says, “MEQ Solutions is unique in that we are the only company in the world to measure red meat quality and yield end-to-end, from the live animal to the final carcass finish. Most solutions on the market focus on a single point in the chain. We connect the entire system to state-of-the-art hardware and software technology.”
“The real difference is not just measurement, but actionability. If a solution only works in one section of the supply chain, it can tell you what happened, but it can't influence what happens next. People can actually act on upstream data to optimize production, protect brand value and increase commercial profits. This is what turns this from a tool into a true infrastructure for value creation across the supply chain.”
Unlike Marble Technologies or Silver Fern Farms, MEQ stands out in terms of its level of certification, scalability, or breadth of its supply chain. Carbone says, “Most existing solutions focus on a single task, such as factory imaging, live animal evaluation, genetics, feeding efficiency, or reporting. The limitation of these approaches is that they only provide a partial view. While these solutions can tell you what happened in one place, they do not provide the complete performance story or the ability to act across the entire supply chain.”
What's next?
With this funding, MEQ will expand globally by increasing staff and deepening partnerships in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil and the United States, moving us closer to our goal of becoming the global standard for objective measurement.
Mr Carbone said: “We have built a suite of solutions serving the red meat supply chain and have validated that our approach and solutions can deliver material value in key global markets. Our focus in the coming years is to capitalize on the opportunities in front of us, work even more deeply with our current partners to support them in more meaningful ways than ever, and expand ourselves into a wider part of the supply chain.”
TFN reached out to Carbone for comment regarding diversity and inclusion. There was no response at the time of publication.
