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Craft and related trades workers · code 7515

Food and beverage tasters and graders

Food and beverage tasters and graders inspect, taste and grade various types of agricultural products, food and beverages. Tasks include - (a) inspecting, testing, tasting and smelling agricultural products, food and beverages at various stages of processing; (b) determining quality, acceptability to consumer tastes and approximate value of products, and grading them into appropriate classes; (c) discarding inferior products; (d) recording the grade and/or identification numbers on tags, receiving or sales sheets; (e) weighing and measuring products. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Food grader - Food taster - Liquor taster - Tea taster - Wine taster

A few tasks are affected, but the heart of the job isn't. It ranks 246 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • farm milk controller
  • food grader
  • master coffee roaster
  • malt master
  • coffee taster

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

69.4
Holds up
against AI Minimal Exposure

AI could take on 30.6 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 30.6 = 69.4

That's the whole sum, and you can check it against the ILO's study.

55.5
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs

31.7
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 35.7 · hand skill 37.5 · cramped spaces 21.9 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · fiddly under 39.4 Hands-on, less fiddly work

Less fine handwork and fewer cramped spaces than a typical hands-on job. That clears one hurdle for machines. It doesn't mean machines are doing this work yet.

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.7-work-setting measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

What this number leaves out This job rates 55.5 out of 100 for how hands-on it is. The score above only looks at AI tools, not robots, and for work like this robots are the bigger question.

The tasks behind the score

The score is the average of these. A job is really a bundle of tasks, and an average can hide how uneven that bundle is.

The task AI could do most of scores 55, while the average is 30.6. A big gap means some of this job is wide open to AI and some of it barely at all. That's quite different from a job where everything sits somewhere in the middle, even when the averages match.

  1. 55

    Recording the grade and/or identification numbers on tags, receiving, or sales sheets

    Medium
  2. 36.8

    Determining quality, acceptability to consumer tastes and approximate value of products, and grading them into appropriate classes

    Low
  3. 25

    Discarding inferior products

    Low
  4. 19.5

    Inspecting, testing, tasting and smelling agricultural products, food and beverages at various stages of processing

    Very Low
  5. 16.5

    Weighing and measuring products.

    Very Low

5 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.7-work-setting

Helped, or replaced?

The score above can't tell a tool that makes you faster from one that does the task instead of you. Jobs and Skills Australia looked at those two things separately, and this is their result, matched to this job.

2 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

AI helps you
61.5
AI does it for you
32

Helping wins by 29.5 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 8311, 8393

Compared with similar jobs

There are 65 jobs in the “Craft and related trades workers” group, averaging 83.7. This one is below that.