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Kansas State University, Manhattan 66506
Abstract
The USDA beef grading system should be modernized to encourage shorter feeding periods on high grain diets and trimmer cattle at slaughter. To be more competitive with other meat species and other protein sources, the beef industry must become more efficient. Shorter feeding periods would provide consumers with a leaner product lower in calories and higher in other nutrients. The grading system should be modernized, based on research, with the best interest of both the beef industry and the consumer in mind. When political or economic pressures prevent research from being die basis for change, or when USDA ignores research, then USDA grading should be abolished. Modernization of grades cannot correct for industry attitudes and practices that are not in the best interest of the entire beef production and processing industry. Grade changes should be applicable to such new processing technologies as prerigor boning; however, some level of visual quality will continue to be important in the future. Some measure of fatness will be necessary to help assure a certain level of palatability, and lean color and fat color will continue to be important for consumer acceptance. This will be true even though postmortem technology can be used to enhance or assure acceptable palatability. Marbling should be de-emphasized, but still be used in assessing visual quality of carcasses that are chilled before grading. A fat thickness measurement or fat score indicates essentially the same factors that marbling does (time-on-feed, palatability and cutability) and can be assessed prerigor, whereas marbling cannot be. However, fat thickness also indicates some factors that marbling does not (dressing percentage, carcass chilling rate and cooler shrinkage). Although dressing percentage is overemphasized by beef slaughter plants, it will continue to be important. Yield grading has been vital in changing cattle types and feeding practices, but it too should be modernized. Yield grades should be simplified and applied more accurately. Simultaneous changes in yield and quality grading seem appropriate. USDA grade standards and procedures should be modernized periodically to encourage efficient beef production and processing and to provide consumers with a highly nutritious and palatable product.
1 Paper presented at the symposium on "Beef Carcass Evaluation" at the 73rd Annu. Meet, of the Amer. Soc. Anim. Sci., North Carolina State Univ., Raleigh, July 27, 1981.
2 Contribution No. 82-83-A, Dept. of Anim. Sci. and Ind., Kansas Agr. Exp. St a., Manhattan 66506.
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