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Relationship of Loin Eye Area, Separable Lean of Various Beef Cuts and Carcass Measurements to Total Carcass Lean in Beef¹

Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station and United State Department of Agriculture

Abstract

The area of loin eye, carcass weight, the separable lean of a particular beef cut, and various linear carcass measurements were evaluated as to their usefulness for predicting total carcass leanness. The area of loin eye was associated with only 18% of the variation of separable carcass lean, and 5–30% of the variation in the separable lean of the more valuable cuts of beef. Likewise, the relationships of the various linear carcass measurements with either loin eye area or carcass separable lean were quite low. Carcass width and circumference measurements were more highly related to loin eye area, while the various linear measurements descriptive of carcass length were closely related to total lean. Bone weight of the entire carcass was highly related to total separable carcass lean (r=0.75).

The separable lean of a particular cut of beef was found to be more descriptive of carcass leanness or muscling than either the area of loin eye or the various carcass measurements. Correlation coefficients between total separable carcass lean and the lean of various wholesale cuts were 0.95 with round, 0.93 with chuck, 0.81 with foreshank, 0.80 with sirloin, and 0.75 with shortloin. From the regression equations calculated from these data, total carcass lean was found to increase by 2.94 and 20.43 lb. for each pound increase in separable round or foreshank lean, respectively. The high relationship of the lean content in these and other beef cuts (especially the round), to the total lean of the carcass is indicative of their usefulness to predict total carcass muscling in a particular beef carcass.

¹ Published with the approval of the Directors of the Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station,Knoxville, and the Animal Husbandry Research Division, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture, Beltsville, Md.This work is a part of the S-10 Regional Beef Cattle Breeding Project which is cooperative between Southern State Experiment Stations and the U. S. Dept. of Agriculture.

² Associate and Assistant Animal Husbandmen, respectively. Tenn. Agr. Exp. Stat., Knoxville.

³ Beef Cattle Research Branch, Animal Husbandry Research Division, ARS, U. S. Dept of Agriculture, Knoxville, Tenn.

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