Beef quality contributes to consumers’ decision to purchase beef. An improvement of beef quality can increase demand, benefiting both producers and consumers.
Leading beef quality defects and subsequent lost carcass value include inappropriate carcass size and weight, inadequate tenderness, insufficient intramuscular fat (marbling) and excess external fat cover.
Cattle enter the feedlot at varying weights and ages and from different nutritional backgrounds. This variation could produce differences in carcass quality. The economically important measures of carcass quality are yield grade and quality grade. They are directly related: as cattle fatten in the feedlot, both quality grade and yield grade increase.
Because cattle are commercially fed to fat-constant end points, it is logical to make comparisons at equal fat end points. The quality grade of carcass is mostly determined by the amount of marbling on the cut surface of the ribeye between the 12th and 13th ribs. Marbling is the flecks of fat in the ribeye, Increase marbling results in higher quality grades.
The amount of marbling required for each quality grade varies slightly with the maturity of the cattle, but most cattle in typical production systems are younger than 30 months old at slaughter and therefore all under maturity class A.
Carcass quality
