Abstract: Automatic machine and method for determining the depth or thickness of a layer of fat on a meat section or cut during transport by a moving conveyor, first through a measuring station involving employment of a bank of individually-operable probes arranged transversely of the conveyor travel and intermittently extendable toward and retractible from the meat section, the probes being used to successively measure a plurality of local values in a plurality of sites as they penetrate the fat layer and generate signals representative of those local values for transmittal to and storage in a memory bank as a profile of the fat layer, and second through a trimming station involving employment of an endless band saw having a working run extended transversely of and above the meat section cooperant with means for effecting lateral displacement of portions of the saw blade from the normal reference position responsive to signals from the memory representative of the profile for the prepositioning of the saw blade relati