Meat Savvy: USDA Beef Grades

I mentioned in my last post how my meat knowledge has rubbed off on my mom, what with her meat thermometer and all. So here comes a newly inspired series of posts called "Meat Savvy." These will focus on shopping for and cooking meat, while the "Meet Your Meat" series is more to make you aware of what you're buying.

So, as I'm a huge fan of cattle dishes (in case you couldn't tell by that obnoxiously large hamburger), the most important first thing about being meat savvy is understanding how beef is graded by the USDA. There are two main scales, yield grade and quality grade. Now, it is important to note that unlike inspection, which is required by law, a harvesting or processing facility is NOT required to grade their meat. This is a purely voluntary thing because it costs the facility extra.

A yield grade is pretty much exactly as it sounds--the amount of usable, lean meat on a carcass, compared to the weight of the carcass pre-slaughter. There is a really complicated process and formula to determine a yield grade, which Texas A & M University provides here. (It might not be that complicated, but I get really overwhelmed with numbers sometimes!) Yield grades range from 1 to 5, with 1 being the highest and 5 being the lowest. 1 has a higher yield of lean to fat than 5, and it honestly does not matter that much for the average consumer how much meat this particular bovine had on its body. The only way it probably would matter for a consumer is if you were buying a whole carcass to eat or freeze for yourself and you wanted to know how many meals it would get you.

For that reason, we're going to focus on quality grades in this blog, because that SHOULD matter to you, as a meat savvy shopper. Quality grades basically determine how tender, juicy, and palatable meat is. There are eight quality grades that the Agricultural Marketing Service (ARS) gives for beef: Prime, Choice, Select, Standard, Commercial, Utility, Cutter, and Canner.

Why is it so important to know what these grades mean? In my opinion, it's because if you don't know anything else about meat, you can understand the basics of what these eight grades stand for, and know immediately if that steak in your hand is worth buying or not. There are tons of factors that go into choosing the cut of meat for you, but this one is very very basic, because the USDA has done the job for you.

Prime grade, of course, is the top of the top. Why? Mostly because of the age of the animal that is slaughtered. The younger the animal (and by young, I'm talking under three years old), the more tender the meat. Prime meat only comes from steers (males who are castrated between 3 and 6 months of age) and heifers (females who have never been bred for reproductive purposes). It also has a TON of marbling. Marbling is intramuscular fat that gives flavor to the meat. If you look at a cut of raw steak, for example, prime steak has a lot of little white tissues running through it. That's marbling.

Choice is similar to prime, but is less marbled. Only certain cuts of meat from choice cattle are going to be as tender as the same cuts from a prime animal. Choice meat comes from heifers, steers, and cows under 30 months of age. A cow, if you didn't know, is technically a female that has had at least one calf before.

If you're at the grocery store and are not meat savvy at all, you're probably going to be looking for Select grade whether you know it or not. Select grade has very little marbling, so it appears to be leaner than choice and prime. However, it's that marbling that gives meat flavor, tenderness, and juiciness, so your Select graded cuts might require more spices, tenderizing, and marinating if you want them to taste similar to higher quality meats. Once again, 30 months is the maximum age an animal can qualify for being Select.

Standard grade is for cattle ages 30 to 42 months, and Commerical grade is for cattle (steers, heifers, and cows) over the age of 42 months. These grades are probably not going to appear on any label because they are not good grades and so a facility is not going to pay to have a label for them. You can still find them in grocery stores though, most likely sold as the store brand's meat.

The last three grades, Utility, Cutter, and Canner, are rarely sold on retail shelves. They're kind of the low point of the beef grades; basically used for process products and pet foods because the meat is definitely not marbled enough to be sold straight off the animal. I have heard before that these three grades provide the meat for many fast-food restaurants' hamburgers, but I want to research on that before I write about it...just to make sure.

The above grades were for meat from heifers, steers, and cows, in case you missed that point. The USDA's AMS (Agricultural Marketing Service) also has grades for bullock meat. Bullocks are males that are castrated after the recommended age of 3-6 months. By the time they are castrated, they have begun showing secondary characteristics of a bull (in humans, think of a bullock as a teenage boy), so their meat is going to be a little different than steer meat because of testosterone and other sex hormones in the animal. The grades for bullock meat are Prime, Choice, Select, Standard, and Utility; basically the qualifications are the same as listed above.

So before I continue with my last point, you can use these two Web sites (okay, so one is a PDF document, but whatever) to do more in-depth research about beef grading. This first site, the document one, is the United States Standards for Grades of Slaughter Cattle. It has all the technical requirements for grading, like how much fat an animal should have, the ages, that kind of thing. The second site I used, Inspection & Grading of Meat and Poultry, is probably the one you'll want to take a look at. It has images of the seals and explains the grading in terms of marbling and meat flavor, and also lists some uses for the different grades of meat as far as cooking goes.

Last point, as promised. I just want to reiterate something that I think might get lost in translation. Utility, Cutter, and Canner grades are the low grades and are not usually sold. This does not mean that meat with these grades is in any way unsafe for humans to eat. Remember what I said earlier about marbling = flavor, tenderness, and juciness? These bottom three grades of meat straight from the cow are not going to be good for meals as steaks and ribs. People might be able to buy them, but it would take (scuse my language) a hell of a lot of tenderizing and cooking to make those some likable steaks. So most facilities turn these products into processed ones, where the cooking and preparation is done for you before you buy it.

Oh and one more quick thing. You can also slaughter dairy cattle. Usually this is done when the cow is too old to have another calf or is not producing enough milk to satisfy the cost to maintain her in the herd. However, since dairy cattle are bred not for meat quality but for things such as udder size and milk production, the meat is not going to be as high quality graded as beef cattle.

Just wanted to clear those points up; and I think I will do some research on fast-food burger meats, now that I've got the idea stuck in my head...

ADSC Meat

Arguably my favorite part of being an Animal Science major is that at some point during my four-year college career, I will actively participate in every single aspect of the life cycle of livestock, from artificial insemination to gestation to finishing to slaughter. And then, of course, eating the food the animal produces.

Obviously, since I like about 10 vegetables, I definitely am a fan of the eating part. But like most people these days, my family is talking about how important it is to know where your food comes from. Now, this doesn't necesarily mean that you should check your milk to see if it comes from happy cows in California, but to me it means that it's important to promote local and sustainable agriculture. I'll do a researched, factual post about this topic later, because I think it plays a vital role in the future of agriculture in the US.

Tonight is totally my opinion on my favorite place in Athens to get truly local food-- the Animal and Dairy Science department retail meat sales. There is no question where the meat came from and how it was raised. All of the beef, pork, and lamb sold at the retail meat sales are raised and harvested exactly according to USDA standards on UGA-owned land by students and faculty.

Because there is so much research being done at UGA's three campuses to determine genetics for carcass quality, the meat is extremely high quality. Obviously since I haven't done a post yet about how to choose your cuts, I won't go into much detail here, but from experience everything I have tried from the meat sales is delicious. I've had a couple of different cuts of steak and bacon, currently, but my family has also tried some meats and now keeps hounding me about how I need to go to the sales every Friday before I come home and get them this, this, and this.

The availability is kind of iffy, because slaughter is scheduled around classes, so during the summer months pickings have been comparatively slim in the lamb and tenderloin steak departments. The freezer of pork products--ranging from hams to about four different types of sausages--looked pretty full on this past Friday when I was there. Lamb, I heard from the manager, will start being on the shelves probably around September or October.

That kind of makes sense because all of UGA's sheep lambed at the same time this year thanks to a test-run of a new estrous synchronization process.

Also...if you're down for choosing meat based on price over quality, you REALLY need to check out the retail meat sale at least once. The prices are really good-- as in, $11.99/lb tenderloin steaks good. And it's definitely a better cut than what you'll find at Kroger or IGA. I say that because my TV is constantly showing Kroger and IGA commercials for their meat prices, and from shopping at the eastside Kroger in Athens (whose meat choices, by the way, are slimmer than an anorexic person), it is not at all the same caliber you're going to find at UGA.

I actually am planning to do an article on the retail meat sales for the Red & Black at some point. My freshman year I had done interviews for it and everything, but never figured out the right angle to go at it from. One of the questions I asked was where the money from the meat sales went. The answer? Right back to the department, where it is distributed all the way from office supplies to gas for the vans that take students to their labs off-campus. So, by spending $42.35 on Friday afternoon (on 3 pounds of bacon, close to 5 pounds of tenderloin, and 2.5 pounds of bratwurst), I just bought myself some academic benefits somewhere down the line.

I don't think that the retail meat sales sale Kosher or Halal meat, because the slaughtering facility is so small compared to other industrial operations; and the meat is NOT organic, natural, grass-fed, or free-range (that's like grass-fed for pork, just FYI). All the animals harvested at UGA are owned by UGA, and the facility is operated like one that's actually in the industry. So all the inspectors and certifiers are there, and every record is kept according to USDA regulations.

I think I've done enough blabbering for the night. As a journalist, I really really really like having sources, so just talking my opinion bothers the bejeezus out of me, but there you have it. Here are the details if you need them, and if you get any meat from the sales, shoot me a comment/Facebook/Twitter thing and let me know what you think.

Location: Edgar C. Rhodes Animal Dairy Science building on River Road in Athens, Ga

Time: Fridays 1 p.m. - 5 p.m. (Yes, this means every Friday, except for holidays. So July 3 = no meat sale y'all...)

They take cash, checks, and credit/debit cards. Up until like 3 weeks ago they only took cash, so I basically victory danced outside the meat science facililty when I saw that sign. I never have cash, for some reason. But there is a big sign pointing to exactly where in the building the meat sales are so you don't get lost, which is pretty easy to do if you're not an ADSC major.

Oh--and one last thing. I only took one of these classes so far, but if you are interested in learning more and participating in the actual harvesting process (and eating) of livestock, here are some classes you might want to check out:

• ADSC 1050: The Meat We Eat; 2 credit hours; fall semester
• ADSC 2010-L: Introduction to Animal & Dairy Sciences; 4 credit hours, fall & spring (The first part of the class is meat production. I definitely got to butcher a pig. It was so cool.)
• ADSC 3010-L: Meat Merchandising; 2 credit hours; fall semester
• ADSC 3180-L: Meats Judging 1; 2 credit hours, fall semester
• ADSC 3190-L: Meats Judging 2; 2 credit hours, spring semester
• ADSC 3200-L: Evaluation and Composition; 3 credit hours, fall semster (This one is also lovingly referred to as Live/Dead)
• ADSC(FDST) 3650-L: Introductory Meat Science; 3 credit hours, spring semester (Definitely taking this in the coming spring. Can't freakin wait.)
• ADSC 3890: Animal Products in the Human Diet; 3 credit hours, fall semester
• ADSC(FDST) 4140-L: Advanced Meat Science; 3 credit hours, spring semester
• ADSC 4890: Advanced Meat Science; 3 credit hours, spring semester

The two Advanced Meat Science classes have different prerequesites. You can check out all the ADSC classes on the UGA bulletin.

Bovine Somatotropin: The Myth and the Message

Take a look at the Shatto Milk Company advertisement to your right. Now, Shatto, which I had never heard of (considering I have never been to Kansas), is clearly advertising hormone-free milk to its consumers. This is cool by me, I checked out their Web site and it seems to be a smaller family farm that does not use growth hormones in their dairy cattle.

So what's my issue?

Cows naturally have growth hormones.

I'm not sure if you knew that, but they do. Therefore, there's an issue with saying ANY milk is hormone free, because it probably isn't, unless you have some crazy genetically engineered cows (if this ever happens, please expand research into genetically engineering women to skip the whole menopause thing, I beg you). Plus, you kind of have to have hormones to HAVE milk in the first place. These naturally-ocurring hormones include thyroxine, insulin, estrogen, progesterone, a whole list of others, and GROWTH HORMONE.

Here's what you, as a savvy animal agriculture shopper, need to understand. When Shatto Milk Company (and a host of others) say they're selling you hormone-free milk (or other dairy products), it means they're not putting additional growth hormones into their dairy cattle.

A growth hormone is literally exactly what it sounds like--a hormone that increases either growth or production in an animal. According to the Food and Drug Administration, taking growth hormone from the pituitary gland (that's in the general brain area) of cattle and injecting it into dairy animals increased the amount of milk produced. With the use of recombinant DNA technology, it was suddenly possible to mass produce this hormone for use in dairies, and a phenomenon was born. In American dairy cattle, the growth hormone bovine somatotropin is an injectable known as Posilac. Up until 2008, Posilac was produced by the pharmaceutical company Monsanto; now it is produced by Elanco, the animal health division of Eli Lilly and Company. It is not an antibiotic or any other type of medication.

Numerous studies have studied the effects of Posilac on pretty much everything related to dairy animals, and they've all come to similar conclusions that many consumers still do not believe. Basically, when approved amounts of bST are injected into dairy animals, it increases their milk production. From a dairy standpoint, this means that it takes fewer head of cattle to make the same amount of milk a facility produced before the use of Posilac. Below is a direct quote from the studies FDA did in order to decide whether or not to allow the production and use of Posilac by Monsanto:

FDA believes that the available data confirm that biologically significant amounts of rbGH are not absorbed in humans following the consumption of milk from cows treated with rbGH. Oral toxicity studies of longer duration are not necessary because rbGH at dietary levels found in the milk of rbGH-treated cows is not significantly
biologically available.

What does that mean? The studies (and others done by the USDA, WHO, AVMA, etc) show that you can't "contract" growth hormone from drinking milk from cows that have been injected with Posilac. The hormone is not active in the oral state, only in the injected state where it gets into the bloodstream. Plus, even if you do for some bizarre reason absorb some bST into your bloodstream, it does not make a difference, as the FDA showed the levels of bST in milk are not enough to adversely affect consumers.

Now, here's something the FDA also talked about in the same document. Posilac was shown to somewhat increase levels of mastitis (bacterial infection of the udder). Mastitis is usually treated with injectable antibiotics, which are not allowed in the human food chain. These treated cows cannot have the milk produced by their infected quarters sold for a certain period of time following treatment,so that could mean decreased profit in some cases depending on the size of the herd.

Those are the scientific facts that lots of groups tend to ignore about the use of bST. Personally, I don't care if you drink non-bST milk or not, because half the time you're not going to know unless the bottle is labeled. I just hope you're making that choice for the right reason, and not because you are misinformed about the use of Posilac. A lot of the misconceptions come from animal rights groups and lobbyist groups, who take the FDA study's discussion about mastitis/antibiotics and exploit it to show how horrible bST is.

*Just a side note, until today I thought the Center for Food Safety was an actual government organization, since I hear it quoted in a lot of news stories. Sadly...it's more of a lobbyist organization, and does not appear to be affiliated with the US government in any way. Looking at the Web site, it seems to ignore and purposely misconstrue research, and instead play on consumers' fears and marketing schemes of hormone-free milk*

My suggestion to you is to do some research of your own on this issue...which actually shouldn't be an issue. The CFS is making a mountain out of a molehill, in my opinion. Do a little experiment. Try some hormone-free milk (one that is clearly labeled as such) and some that is not labeled that way...and see if you can taste a difference.

Meet Your Meat: Grass-Roots Movements

One of the biggest grassroots trends in the production animal industry is literally a grass-root trend.

If you get meat at the vast majority of grocery stores and restaurants, chances are you're getting meat that has been industrially produced. No, this doesn't mean your meat is grown in a factory, it just means it's mass produced, but we'll get into that later. What I want to talk about today is the meat served at "specialty" restaurants and supermarkets (and for some stores, their "specialty" sections).

I'm pretty positive you've all seen evidence of the trend, unless maybe if you're a recluse who lives under a rock and eats dandylions for sustenance, but then I don't know why you'd use the internet. Anyway. Most of the issues with organic and natural production are based around crop production--that's fruits, veggies, and fiber products--that are grown without the use of chemical pesticides, herbicides, and lab genetic modification. Animal agriculture has its own version of the trend too.

According to the Agricultural Marketing Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (AMS and USDA respectively), organic livestock production has six main standards: animals must be raised in organic settings from the last third of pregnancy and from the second day of life for poultry; feed must be 100% organic, but vitamins and minerals may be supplemented; dairy animals must be managed organically for at least 12 months before their milk can be sold as organic, and during this 12 months they may be given fodder from fields in the third stage of organic transition; no growth-producing hormones and absolutely no antibiotics; vaccines and other preventative measures must be used to keep animals healthy, but those that appear on a list of prohibited medications may not be used; and animals must have access to the outdoors unless they are sick, in certain production stages, or if there are adverse affects on soil and water quality.

That looks like a lot of stuff, but basically (in laymen's terms) what organic animal production does is raise animals rather like pioneers did. Feed them a diet of grains and silage that has not been treated with chemicals (because pioneers didn't have chemicals, and they probably didn't know about vitamins and minerals either), growth hormones and antibiotics hadn't been discovered yet, and call in a vet if something is seriously wrong. The whole organic field/environment requirement means that if your animals are supposed to be organic, your pastures must be too. That requires a three-year transition period from modern to traditional methods, and the reason it's important is because a lot of fields used pesticides before the organic movement really started picking up.

Now that you have a basic idea of how to grow organic animals, say you want to sell them. The AMS has labeling protocols for organic products (we'll go into marketing scams in a later post), that imply for "organic" labeled meat products, your pastures and methods must be certified organic. Unlike the processed organic foods, you can't have a "70% organic cow" and list the non-organic ingredients. A possible exception to this could be some pre-packaged meat meals (frozen foods, hamburger patties stuffed with cheese and other goodies, etc), but in general when you are just selling some brisket...yeah, it's either organic or not.

After organic, we've got "grass fed" meat claims. Grass fed is actually different from organic. For organic diets, your animals can be fed pretty much anything to give them their nutrients, as long as the "anything" is organic. Grass fed, especially beef, means you cannot feed your animals ANYTHING besides grass, legumes, browse, or pre-grain cereal crops (like wheat, but before the grains develop on the stalk). Hay and silage (fermented grasses), vitamins, and minerals are also "acceptable" foods for the grass fed claim. Note, too, that grass fed can also be referred to as "forage fed." 

The third grassroots movement (slightly less grassrootsy than "grass fed") is the claim of natural or naturally raised meat. This term is commonly confused with organic, but it takes organic a couple of steps further--offspring are raised with their dams, and no animal products or byproducts can be used in animal fodder. It seems to me like this is more of a marketing claim than the other two, because this one is not yet recognized as an official standard by the USDA.

This post is already hugely long, but I think it's extremely important for consumers to realize what type of meat they are buying. I'm going to do more posts about different marketing claims that take advantage of consumers' ignorance (most of these are in the poultry industry), and I hope that ya'll will be able to make more informed choices about the types of meat you're getting.