Hello friends, I'm Chad Carr in the department of animal sciences here at the University of Florida. I'd like to welcome you back here for this, the fourth week of The Meat We Eat, and in this week's initial installment, we'll be discussing the U.S. grading system, and how that associates with value and price discovery throughout our system. And, one thing that I always try to imply to students in our on campus, in person version of The Meat We Eat, one of the core concepts that I want folks to understand is the difference between what we've talked about previously, USDA FSIS inspection, and USDA grading. Because it's something that's really easy to confuse, but you can not have two more vastly different entities as a whole. So, as we think about the picture here, where we see the, the, the inspection bug with the 38 on it, that deals with USDA FSIS inspection. And inspection is something that if we are going to sell these products at retail, food service, or export, those animals must be slaughtered under USDA FSIS inspection. It's required. It's paid for by our tax by our taxes, by our citizens, and it's something that deals with the wholesomeness and safety of the product, whereas grading is a completely different entity. It's within USDA but it's a different branch of USDA. It's through the ag marketing service, and it works to facilitate the sale predominantly, honestly, of beef and lamb, but some other commodities as well on a sight unseen basis. It's paid for by the packer and whoever it is that is working on behalf of AMS, they come in and they apply the standards and it serves as a way to add value to the products that they produce. So, there it kind of goes through that cascade of things that I've just discussed between the difference in grading and inspection and man I, we want you to kind of understand those core concepts for sure. And like it says yere with grading, it is something that works to facilitate marketing, and it works to predict palatability and or red meat yield loosely. As we think about to, to start discussing USDA grades of beef, pork and lamb carcasses, we should just real briefly address differences in classes to, as that associates with nomenclature that USDA AMS has. So, beef as a whole, or bovine carcasses, all of them wouldn't be termed as a beef carcass relative to a USDA AMS definition. So, from a, a, an animal just pro, following their birth, to somewhere around ten weeks of age, that would qualify under a USDA AMS definition as veal. From that point until roughly nine months of age, would be defined by USDA AMS as calf. And then beef would be all animals following nine months of age regardless of gender. Within sheep, or ovine, class designation, we would have lamb, that'd be those animals would be under a year of age, and yearling mutton would be intermediate, and then ultimately, mutton would be those which we'll talk about later, have two mature spool joints and they'd be in excess of two years of age. We think about class within the porcine species, we see the designations there. If you're wondering what a stag or bullock would be, those that have comparable definitions. That would be the class carcass definition of an animal that had been castrated after they reach sexual maturity. So a carcass that would have a different kind of shape, and probably gives up a decent be it in terms of palatability. So, as a whole, as we think about the system of USDA grades and what they work to do, we have a very heterogeneous population, we're all over the board, 'Kay? And we use the standards that have been established by the USDA AMS, which are science based, to take and be able to categorize carcasses at the endpoint based on how we think their predicted palatability will be, or relative to how we think they're ultimate red meat yield will be 'Kay? So, it's not perfect, the relationship that we had between eating satisfaction in USDA beef or lamb grade, but honestly within this country, it's probably still as good a definition, or as good a tool as we have, to categorize whole muscle cuts based on their ultimate palatability. And it can be worked on a sight unseen basis. It's integral to our country's red meat and livestock marketing. yeah. It, it, like it states there, USDA grading, it does exist for all red meat species, in chicken but it's really utilized extensively in the beef industry, in the lamb business. Beef is the only species which is ribbed commercially in the USDA AMS grades associate with the presentation of the rib eye or loin eye, and so ribbing, where we cut through the vertebral column to present the loin muscle, or the rib eye area, it's only really within beef. And the other thing, is that within the beef industry in this country now, almost all of the assessment of the yield grade factors that we will talk about, and marbling in all large scale commercial facilities, it's done almost exclusively by instrumentation to some capacity. So, things that we'll talk about here is subjective and that's how I learned to do it subjectively, and we train our students to do this subjectively based on the AMS standards. But now, in industry like I stated, the greatest percentage of the fed beef carcases in this country are graded utilizing instrumentation, which improves the consistency of what we do. So, is what it does, what these USDA grades do, it takes this very, very heterogeneous population that's all over the board, and then at the end, we can take and categorize them into like groups, but relative to what we think the endpoint eating quality of those products ultimately would be. So it gives us a, a, a trade language, and then ultimately that trade language has got documented science associated with it, and then that works with the market in supply and demand to ultimately impact price discovery, is what it really does. So yeah, yield and quality grading within the beef industry, they're completely divergent. And so collectively, this is I, I put this little cross up here to, to kind of designate this essentially every semester, it seems like, in a class I teach but, as a whole, as we have animals that improve in terms of yield, or percent red meat yield, then there's an antagonistic relationship with the quality of those products oftentimes. So, as quality improves, as a whole will tend to have a decrease in the yield of those products. And so, collectively, that's what we try to work to, to categorize based on those which in terms of the eating quality, hopefully of the product and also how much we can actually utilize or further process, just like it says there. Folks who work for USDA AMS and assign grades of the carcasses, they work completely independent of the packer facility they work at. So, quality grade, exactly what it says, these are the traits we're going to look at to try to predict the eating quality of the product on down the line. And palatability to meat as a whole, this would be different if we were talking about cereal or orange juice or whatever, but as a whole, palatability to a cooked meat product entails tenderness, juiciness and flavor, and some mouth feel as well, but that's collectively what it implies. How are we going to decipher that? For a beef carcass, they're not going to tell us how old they are, alright? So, we use this determinate, determination of maturity to decipher relative age, and then we also take into account, marbling or intramuscular fat, the amount of fat that we see within this rib beef carcass. There at that 12/13th rib interface of the rib eye, put those together to come up with ultimately the USDA grade quality grade, for the beef carcass. And, this right here documents how that would be done. So, if you think about what this is really predicting, and let's go forward to this picture here. So, along the split vertebral column of this carcass, as I stated earlier, the animal, they're not going to tell us how old they are. But we know as an animal becomes progressively older, physiologically and or chronologically, we know that the products that they produce, will become tougher due to increased amount of collagen cross linking within the muscle, alright? So what we see here along the skeleton, along the tips of this split vertebral column, that call, that cartilage matures and it ossifies, or calcifies, from being cartilage to bone. And as you go from A, as you look at the tips there, associated with the, the white tips extending from those backbone processes, you'll see that it's still pearly white. With C, we can see that a reasonable percentage, probably 40 to 50% of those cartilaginous buttons has been replaced by and is calcified, and then with D, it's probably in excess of 75 or 80% of those top few buttons. So, to kind of make an analogy to a human I guess, if we think about, you know, when we're 15 years old, if we have a tackle football game, it's probably not that big a deal. I'm 34 years old, if we have a tackle football game it's probably not going to be an exceptionally good deal, I'm, I'm, I'm probably going to be okay. I've had calcification of what's going on in my skeleton in that twenty years or so. If we have that tackle football game when we're 70 years old, then it might be pretty bad. And so, what went on there, all of that cartilage has ossified, and that kind of works to represent the maturation of the collagen essentially of that meat, and so they kind of work in unison, that's how we work to come up with the estimates of age. So we also look at the the color of the product. As a whole, as animals mature, it takes more myoglobin to transport the same amount of oxygen to the muscle. And so, those colors becomes more mature as we go from A, all the way to the far, on the other side where we see a very dark, sticky appearing product which is very mature, an E in appearance, 'Kay? So that's what we do to account for the age of the beef carcass, alright? And as carcasses become older, generally the product becomes has a stronger taste and it'll definitely be tougher and less desirable as a whole. Those animals that are deciphered to be young, 'Kay, less than 42 months of age, relative, approximate, their approximate chronological age. They are eligible for the good grades, 'Kay. Prime, Choice, Select and Standard, 'Kay. Those animals which would be in excess of 42 months of age, those will be C, D, and E maturity overall. kind of getting back to this picture over here, dark looking meat, or something that's more than, I don't know 35, 40% percent ossified there along the skeletal column that collectively goes together to be advanced maturity. It's not eligible for those same highest quality, ultimately, highest value grades alright? So within the young steers and heifers that we've talked about so far in terms of at the, the majority of what we process in this country, that the within A and B maturity, the driving force and what ultimately becomes their USDA quality grade, is the amount of fat within the muscle, or intramuscular fat or marbling. So as we go here from where it says slight double zero, that's the minimum requirement in that A maturity carcass to be USDA Select. Small double zero would be the minimum requirement within a young A maturity carcass to be USDA Choice. And slightly abundant double zero would be the minimum requirement to be USDA Prime, 'Kay. So that's within A maturity, it's solely driven by the amount of fat within the muscle, and we know that as a whole, that higher quality grading carcasses, the instances of desirable eating experiences as compared to those that are lower quality grading there's a linear relationship there, for sure, alright? That's one half of beef grading, quality, of what we get to consume, how desirable will it be to eat? The other component is of what we ultimately buy, or how much can we consume, or further process. Quality or amount, that's what yield is talking about, and this is the definition right here. To account for the percentage of red meat that we'll get from a beef carcass, we take into account four things, what the carcass weighs, external fat, that's what we've got here, just in fat thickness outside the rib eye or external fat, how much fat we have on the inside of the carcass, so kidney, pelvic, and heart fat, and rib eye area, an estimate of muscling. Those are the four parameters that we utilize to estimate the percentage of red meat that we get from a carcass. A yield grade one zero would be the leanest, heaviest weight or pardon me, the leanest, heaviest muscle carcass relative to its carcass weight. A yield grade 5 would be the fattest, lightest weight carcass, and probably going to be pretty heavy weight, 'Kay, so yield grade 1, the greatest percentage of red meat yield. A yield grade 5, 9 is the gobbiest fat and lowest cutability as a whole. Okay, so those two collectively go together, and as we've talked about just a second ago, supply and demand dictates the value and ultimate carcass discounts for those yield and quality grade premiums. In the hog business, in the pork industry, honestly we've got a pretty big wide variation in the age at which beef cattle are marketed, we've got big ranges in beef cattle production system within this country. In the hog business, it's pretty integrated. We talked about that in the very first lecture that we had here within the online Coursera platform of The Meat We Eat. And so with that, we've got pretty darn similar genetics, pretty darn similar production systems, and ultimately, relatively speaking, we have more consistent palatability or quality than we would as compared within the beef industry, 'Kay. So, since we don't have, generally, the overwhelming variation that we see in terms of production systems, genetics, et cetera that we have in the U.S. beef industry, most of the marketing within the hog business, is driven by like it says right there, carcass composition largely. That is not to say that we don't have some variation in poor clean quality because that is not true. And it's a challenge to our domestic industry as we try to to continue to accelerate our pork export markets internationally it's a big challenge. But as we look here at this picture, 'Kay, deviations that we see, if we could do a good job at predicting pork quality which, it's a challenge and like we say, we probably don't have that much variation as compared to what we do in the beef industry. But, this product down here in the corner where it looks kind of light colored and, and, very spongy and, and, exudative looking, that's PSE, appearing ham face there. Pale, soft and exudated. Here in the center is red, firm and normal and on the other side is dark, firm and dry. We'll talk about that and the impacts that it has on palatability in our palatability lecture but, if we can do an accurate job of predicting that from looking at the whole carcass, we would. But it's a challenge, and so the, the ability to do it as effectively as we can with the beef industry is not there. So we tend to work like we state right here, predominantly relative to weight, and how much red meat yield we get. Those are the driving factors relative to the value of the average pork carcass in this country. Lamb industry we talked about initially in our first lecture, there's a lot a cascade of challenges relative to the, the U.S. lamb feeding industry. But lambs are, their quality and yield grading system is set up pretty bipartite, kind of similar to the beef system, in that we would assess quality and yield grades, both, most generally. I didn't mention this, but there are yield and quality grades for the pork industry, but since we're so consistent as a whole it's predom, they're predominately just marketed on using some instrumentation to quantify what the actual percentage of red meat yield that we would get from each carcass. So, yield grade for a lamb carcass, it dictates what we say right there. The percentage of closely trim four lean cuts that we would get from a lamb carcass, and those are, ham or round or, leg loin, rack and shoulder and we can see just like we talked about with the beef carcass, a Yield Grade 1's the leanest, heaviest muscle carcass. A Yield Grade 5, heavy weight, fat and light muscle. So, quality grading is important relative to the value of lamb carcasses as long as we are to decipher differentiation between a mature animal and a young animal. Those that are choice or prime, which is the, the majority of the young fed lambs that we market in this country, there's very little difference, generally, in value or palatability between choice and prime. But there's a big difference between a young lamb, or a mature sheep which generates a mutton carcass, 'Kay? And there's a big difference in the potential palatability of those products as well. So, big difference in price between lamb and mutton. How do we decipher the difference between lamb and mutton, is we come here, when a lamb is slaughtered, and on the slaughter floor we will take a knife and come right here and we will break these front feet, or trotters, at what is called this epiphyseal plate, 'Kay. If this animal is immature, then it will break at that epiphyseal plate, and we'll have a look, like it shows there, where it says break joint, 'Kay. So you might have heard folks talk about oh, well my son's got one leg shorter than the other because he broke his leg at his break, or at his growth plate when he was young. Same general concept here. That's what that epiphyseal plate is. As we become older, and mature, that epiphyseal plate will ossify, it'll no longer break right here in the middle of that of the arm, or the front leg. And then it'll come down here to this wrist joint, and it will look like a spool. So, a mutton carcass would have mature spools and it'd be associated with a mature epiphyseal plate, or those from a lamb would be immature. So that's a big difference in value there between young and old sh, mutton. And then also we take into account, kind of an, an indirect indicator of palatability. Probably not as good of an association with this as we have with marbling, but we'll look at these streaks of fat on the inside of the carcass. It's called flank streaking, and then we also take into account the width of the carcass as compared to its length, our term called conformation, we put those together to ultimately come up with a lamb quality grade. But again, the big difference that we'd have relative to ultimate economic value is that those are prime and choice young lambs have a big difference as compared to their palatability to a mature mutton carcass. Thinking about grades as a whole, the USDA grades which are utilized in industry extensively in the beef and lamb business in this country, going from highest to lowest. We see prime, choice, select and standard, those would be associated with the young, beef carcass grades, those from animals call breeding animals of advance maturity would be commercial, down through canner. Differentiation in yield grade that we see, and for lamb quality grades, it'd go from prime and choice, if we did have a very few instances of real thin lightweight lambs, they could be good grade. There's a differentiation in value oftentimes there. And we don't show, but mutton would be a, a, a different grade in itself. Within the U.S. poultry industry, grades do exist, and they are utilized as it associates with marketing entire poultry carcasses. An A grade poor, poultry carcass would be one that would not have any scores to the breast, would have all wings intact, down to a C grade carcass, which ultimately would be fabricated into component pieces there at the processing facility. So, the one other thing that, that a USDA AMS grader does, is not only do they apply the grades that have been gathered, or that are established through AMS market, or AMS, but they certify carcasses relative to customers who would like to add value, where they can utilize things that can be seen by assessing the live animal or carcass in combination with the USDA AMS standards for grades, 'Kay. And like it says there, the purpose of this is to add value, to establish a brand identity, and to improve the consistency of the product, Kay? Today, there are 128 certified branded beef programs which USDA AMS works to facilitate. The majority of those have the written quantification of Angus in them. So, what does that mean? Does that mean that all of the meat that's provided from some kind of Angus program, is guaranteed to be USDA Angus or, pardon me, is guaranteed to be purebred Angus? No, not at all. Essentially, the Angus designation as it associates with USDA's definition of Angus is, this is the definition associated with the live animal requirement for certified Angus beef, and it states here that they must have a 51% black hair coat. So it essentially means that they are certified black hided. Now, the specs specifically for certified Angus beef are very discriminating and are science based relative to the, the, carcass merit and how that associates with the palatability of the beef product, but that in itself, the live animal specs, these are the live animal specs for Angus to be qualified as 51% black hided or more as it states something that's gray or roan would not qualified and must have minimal Brahman influence. So, Angus is a breed, it's not a kind of meat, and relative to USDA's definition of what the Angus GLA stamp implies, is that it must, it predominately means it must be from an animal that's 51% black hided. All of these other additional branded beef programs they take into account a menagerie of carcass parameters and USDA AMS works to certify that they hit those standards. Thank you, and we will see you next time. [BLANK_AUDIO]
