BEEF-SIG Project on Irish Grass-Fed Beef

Four-year UCD and Teagasc collaboration developing analytical signatures to verify grass-fed Irish beef.

Signatures of Irish Grass-Fed Beef (BEEF-SIG)

BEEF-SIG is a four-year collaborative research project between University College Dublin (UCD) and Teagasc (the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority), funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine starting 1 January 2019.

Irish beef is internationally recognised for its pasture-based production—for example, export markets such as the United States seek verification of animals raised on a predominantly grass diet under Bord Bia’s Sustainable Beef & Lamb Assurance Scheme (SBLAS). BEEF-SIG combines stable isotope ratio analysis, trace elemental profiling, and multivariate statistical classification to objectively quantify farm feed inputs (grass, silage, concentrates) and verify grass-fed origin claims.