Changing the Beef Grading Systems

Changing the Beef Grading Systems

Long time beef industry consultant Mack Graves recently wrote a blog for the Meating Place website in which he suggested some changes to the current beef grading system. Graves says it’s time to bring the grading system into the 21st century.

 

Graves: “The consumer wants transparency. One of the ways you can be transparent is to be able to trace a piece a meat back to where the ranch where the animal was born and the cattle was raised. We can do that. We can identify every single animal. If we can every person that gets on a plane, every day with a unique number — we can do that with cattle. We can track it back. Second thing is look we have eight quality grades. All we need is prime, choice, select. We don’t need anything else. The yield grades — more of function of how the animal is going to cut. You look at their surface fat — what we call bark— to see how much needs to be trimmed off. That can be reduced from five to three. Then a USDA meat grader — and God bless them — makes a decision on that carcass within two or three seconds whether it is gong to be prime, choice or select and the cutability score in two or three seconds and then goes to the next one. We can do that more accurately with electronic or camera measurements. The last is near and dear to my heart because I was in the natural beef industry is eliminate the natural because it means nothing — minimally processed, no artificial ingredients — it doesn’t mean anything to anyone because its doesn’t refer to how the animal was raised and that is the natural part of it.”

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