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IF THE U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) changes the federal beef grading standards as recently proposed, what would it mean to consumers?
USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) points out that the changes proposed are not drastic. Nevertheless, agency officials say that the changes could have both long and short range benefits for consumers and would add both precision and efficiency to the production and marketing of beef.
John C. Pierce, AMS’s livestock division director, feels the most significant effect would be the long range one — one that could mean extensive reduction in the amount of excess fat on cattle— and on beef. Such reduction could mean substantial savings to both producers and consumers. The cost of producing, shipping, trimming off excess fat on beef now runs to more than $2 billion annually.
Much of this cost could be avoided through increased production of “meat type” cattle, the AMS official says. These are cattle which have the inherent ability to produce high quality beef, are thickly muscled, but yet have little excess fat when they reach market
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