991155 USDA Beef Grading System QuestionedNovember 15, 1999Washington - Here's something for steak lovers to chew on: When it comes to that tough T-bone, consider going easy on the chef and cutting into the government. For decades, the Agriculture Department has graded the quality of beef according to the “marbling,” or flecks of fat in the meat. The fat, it was thought, made a steak tender as well as tasty and juicy. It turns out that fat has little to do with tenderness. Scientists say heredity is far more important, and they cite other key factors: the feed the cow ate, the stress the animal may have been under, and how long the meat is aged after slaughter. Their findings may lead to new ways to raise cattle that yield tasty yet relatively lean meat. “The best data would show that marbling would account for about 5% to 10% of the meat variation,” said animal physiologist Mohammad Koohmaraie, leader of the meat research unit at a USDA laboratory in Clay Center, Neb. The fat-based method of grading beef “is the best we've got, but it's far from adequate,” he said. “Right now, if you go and buy a piece of meat your best judge is the marbling. You go home and it could be bad or it could be good,” he said. The government's top grade, used primarily by restaurants, is prime, followed by choice and select. There are several lesser classifications for beef that typically is sold as ungraded or ground into hamburger or hot dogs. To assign the grades, inspectors check the marbling in a specific location of each carcass -- the “ribeye” muscle between the 12th and 13th ribs. The meat then is stamped with a purple shield indicating the grade. To qualify as prime, USDA rules require a “slightly abundant” amount of marbling. For choice, there must be a “small” to “modest” amount of fat, depending on the age of the cow. The problem, says Koohmaraie, is that a steak with 3% fat can turn out to be just as tender as one with 10% fat. Studies also indicate that one of every four select steaks will turn out to be tough, as will every 10th choice steak. Meatpackers have been slow to change the way meat is marketed because they do not see the profit in it, said Ernest Davis, an agricultural economist with Texas A&M University. But cattle producers, who want to reverse what had been until recently a steady decline in beef consumption, are trying to identify cattle that will yield good cuts of meat. They also hope to find better ways to test beef for taste and tenderness. “Consumers are demanding more than they have in the past and they're basically asking for us to put a more consistent product in the retail case, so that every steak they prepare is going to be similar,” said James O. Reagan of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. The producers' group has tried out a colormetric device, borrowed from the textile industry, for testing beef carcasses. So far, it can identify six out of every 10 tender carcasses, Reagan said. USDA scientists developed another testing system, for which they claim 94% accuracy, that mimics the way a consumer would test a steak: A piece of the carcass is cooked at high speed and then cut with a machine that measures the force required to slice through the meat. The system has yet to catch on with meatpackers in part because it requires taking a valuable steak off the carcass. Research indicates that consumers might pay higher prices for steak as long as they can be assured it is tender. A blind taste test by Virginia Tech's Institute on Livestock Pricing found that 36% of consumers were willing to pay an extra $1.23 a pound for a tender steak, and even more if the meat were rated as tender. The beef association said it successfully test-marketed steaks labeled as “tender select” in a chain of Denver-area stores. The steaks cost 50 cents more per pound than the store's regular variety.
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