The university's food science department fed meat samples to 3960 taste testers as part of the creation of a beef-eating quality grading system for Silver Fern Farms. Previously, almost 13,000 more taste testers were fed meat by Texas Tech University as part of the same study.
University food scientist Pat Silcock said the consumer trial, which started in March and finished last week, was the largest carried out by the department.
As part of the trial, the taste testers were asked to rate the tenderness, juiciness, flavour and their overall impression of different samples of meat.
The meat was cooked in a grill supplied by Silver Fern Farms, with each sample cooked under controlled conditions to ''take the cooking out of the equation''.
''If you understand what the consumer wants you can charge a premium. So it's a very good way for them to extract value,'' Mr Silcock explained.
The department used people from volunteer groups, sports bodies, schools and churches, and gave the groups donations.
Silver Fern Farms chief executive Keith Cooper said the co-operative funded the research as part of the FarmIQ Primary Growth Partnership programme with the Government.
''We need to be world leaders in red meat if New Zealand is to do more than simply trade commodities and this collaborative research and new grading system and our new range of `Reserve' beef certainly puts us out in front,'' Mr Cooper said.
The research was a ''massive exercise'', with a consumer trial of 500 people considered large for product development.
Under the grading system farmers supplying beef to the co-operative would receive new grading reports indicating how their beef rated across a set of criteria, with those producing higher quality meat receiving a premium.
''It will help them make management decisions around their stock so they can improve the quality of their livestock and maximise their financial returns,'' Mr Cooper said.
