11/21/08 Official instrument grading for beef coming soon

Washington Ag November 21, 2008 After years of testing the USDA is about ready to approve instrument grading for beef, a process that is currently done visually by government graders. Larry Meadows, Chief of the Agricultural Marketing Service's Meat Grading and Certification Branch, was at the recent Washington Cattlemen's Association Convention. Meadows: "We think we are to the point that by December the 4th we are having an industry meeting in Denver, we will be able to give the approval for the final standard for the instrument. Then the plants would put together their quality plans and how to control the instrument and we could give final approval and the plants could start using the process." Meadows says they believe most plants would begin using instrument grading as most have the equipment already, which is a camera that takes a picture of the rib eye, which is fed into a software package. Meadows: "That actually has the standards in it and it calculates the actual quality and yield grade." Meadows says the goal with instrument grading is to grade the same today as they do tomorrow so there aren't for example, fewer choice and more select carcasses compared to visual grading. USDA also has contracted for security to keep the software from being tampered with. I'm Bob Hoff.