Designing Foods Animal Product Options in the Marketplace (1988) / Chapter Skim
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Policy
Policy
Pages 332-356
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From page 332... ...
Relative palatability assessments for beef and lamb are assigned by USDA graders using a hierarchical arrangement of word descriptors wherein the USDA quality grade names Prime, Choice, Goocl/Select, ant] Standard for beef; Prime, Choice, Good, and Utility for lam~indicate the relative level of palatability or the relative probability that a specific piece of meat will be flavorful, juicy, and tender.
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From page 333... ...
The grading systems are "uncoupled" for lamb carcasses; a lamb carcass can be assigned a quality grade, a yield gracle, or both quality and yield grades. In practice, lamb carcasses are seldom yield graded because the industry does not use yield gracles in the determination of trading price.
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From page 334... ...
have heavy layers of subcutaneous fat and skin that are removed before preparation of retail cuts. Essentially all beef and lamb carcasses are presented to USDA officials for gracling; but only those that qualify for merchantable grades Prime and Choice quality grades and, for beef, 1, 2, ant!
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From page 335... ...
above, is positively related to palatability of cooked beef, pork, and lamb. Unfortunately, in most red meat animals, deposition of fat in depots 1 through 4 occurs earlier in the animal's life than deposition of fat as marbling, so that generally by the time the animal has deposited enough intramuscular fat to qualify for the highest USDA quality grades, it has deposited too much fat in the body cavity, between the muscles, and over the exterior of
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From page 336... ...
value minus cost to slaughter/fabricate; that sum is (livi(led by estimated carcass weight to obtain carcass value per pound. The price a buyer will then pay per pound for a live animal is determined by multiplying carcass value per pound times the (lressing percentage; as the ciressing percentage increases, the price paid increases.
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From page 337... ...
As that changes and it is doing so rapidly with the advent of quarterinch fat trim at retail and adoption of threeeighths to one-halfinch fat trim at the packer level the impetus to minimize carcass cost by encouraging overfattening to improve dressing percentage will decline. Indeed the dressing percentage/carcass cost pricing logic used routinely in the trading of live red meat animals is a deterrent to improving leanness, as are the USDA quality grading standards.
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From page 338... ...
In 1974, the National Consumers League recommended that the USDA beef quality gracling system be modified so that one additional grade designation be added between Choice and Good/Select in order to "encourage the production ant] marketing of leaner beef which uses less grain, costs less to procluce, and at the same time would allow prices to reflect this producer-cost reduction." Six years later, the Community Nutrition In stitute stated that"the marketplace is ready and eager to accept a leaner, cheaper beef that must be promoted without imposing subjective opinions of eating pleasure" and that "the discrimination against lean beef inherent in the nomenclature of the present system could be eliminated by developing a new gracle name They suggested 'USDA Choice Lean,' 'USDA Choice Light,' or 'USDA Lean Choice']
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From page 339... ...
~ Results of the National Consumer Retail Beef Study were sufficiently encouraging to prompt the Public Voice for Food ant! Health Policy to petition USDA to "chance the name of the 'Good' federal beef gracle to reflect that it is leaner than 'Prime' or 'Choice' and to stop discrimination against lean beef." Public Voice asked that the wore!
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From page 340... ...
A review of the research at the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station (reported in more cletail by Savell and Cross in this volume) indicates that a minimum level of 3 percent chemical fat in the ribs and loins of cattle, swine, and sheep is necessary to ensure acceptable palatability in beef, pork, and lamb.
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From page 341... ...
as "Light" or "Lean" at the retail level, must in fact be low in fat 341 or the industry will super further loss of consumer confidence. The USDA should consider (leveloping a program to certify fatness of wholesale and retail cuts and should offer a "Certi-Light" or "Certi-Trim" specification that industry could use as a third-party verification that fatness floes not exceed some critical set point (for example, no more than 10 percent chemical fat)
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From page 342... ...
quality grades to allow for hot-fat trimming of beef carcasses and encourages USDA to implement such changes in gracling protocol. The yield grades are useful to certain segments of the beef industry (producers, packers, wholesalers, purveyors, retailers)
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From page 343... ...
less than 25 percent of the recommended intake of saturated fatty acids. In addition, products in both of these categories could contain the minimum level of intramuscular fat (approximately 3 percent)
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From page 344... ...
identification of red meat at the retail level according to fatness level or nutritional merit to signal to consumers that specified quantities of a product could be consumed and still allow for compliance with current dietary guidelines and health recommendations.
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From page 345... ...
Recent recommendations have centered on eating moderate amounts of lean red meat, but there is a problem with consumer acceptance when fat is absent from meat. Meat that is tough or dry or that does not taste good probably will not be eaten, even by people on restricted diets.
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From page 346... ...
, the initial fluid release is affected by degree of aloneness and method of cooking, while sustained juiciness is relatecl to intramuscular fat content. Fat may affect juiciness by enhancing the APPENDIX water-holding capacity of meat, by lubricating the muscle fibers cluring cooking, by increasing the tenderness of meat and thus the apparent sensation of juiciness, or by stimulating salivary flow cluring mastication (Smith and Carpenter, 1974~.
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From page 347... ...
Segmentation into USDA quality grades indicated that roasts from Prime carcasses possessed the highest percentage of clesirable ratings and the lowest percentage of undesirable ratings for juiciness, tenclerness, and overall satisfaction compared with the other grades evaluated. Small and inconsistent differences appeared between roasts from carcasses in the Choice ant]
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From page 348... ...
They found that lamb carcasses that have increased quantities of fat chid more slowly, maintain muscle temperatures conducive to autolytic enzyme degraclation for greater periods of time postmortem, sustain less shortening of sarcomeres, have muscles with lower ultimate pH values, have less perceptible or softer connective tissue, and are more tender than lamb carcasses that have limited quantities of subcutaneous or intramuscular fat. The authors theorized that deposition of increased quantities of subcutaneous or intramuscular fat (particularly in carcasses with limited quantities of subcutaneous fat)
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From page 349... ...
Department of Agriculture on USDA beef quality grades and palatability. This study involved 1,005 carcasses ranging in maturity from A to E and in marbling from Moderately Abundant to Practically Devoid.
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From page 350... ...
overall palatability of loin steaks with 30 to 38 percent accuracy, but could only explain APPENDIX about 8 percent of the variation in sensory pane} ratings or shear force values of round steaks. National Consumer Retail Beef Study The National Consumer Retail Beef Study was an industry-wide program supported by government, producer, feecler, packer, and retailer segments of the industry (Cross et al., 1986~.
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From page 351... ...
Phase II of the National Consumer Retail Beef Study (Cross et al., 1986; Swell et al., in press) was conducted in San Francisco en cl Philadelphia (the two cities in Phase I with the greatest clifference between consumer ratings of steaks from the various marbling levels)
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From page 352... ...
in Phase I of the National Consumer Retail Beef Study supports our contention that once marbling drops below minimum Slight, consumers are likely to find the meat less palatable. Finally, in Phase II ofthe National Consumer Retail Beef Stucly (Cross et al., 1986; Savell et al., in press)
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From page 353... ...
Overall palatability of the strip loin does reach a point- at minimum Slight that the ratings start to diminish quite drastically, but the overall palatability ratings for the top round are fairly level from Slightly Abundant to Practically Devoid marbling. Therefore, it is our opinion that in young cattle, there is no minimum level of marbling or chemical fat necessary to ensure acceptable palatability for cuts from the round or chuck, primarily because ofthe way they are cooked (moist-heat roasting, braising, pan frying, and so on)
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From page 354... ...
1982b. Comparison of subcutaneous fat thickness, marbling and quality grade for predicting palatability of beef.
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From page 355... ...
1987. National Consumer Retail Beef Study: Palatability evaluations of beef loin steaks that differed in marbling.
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