02/25/05 Flabby cattle part two

Flabby Cattle II Adding muscle to beef while maintaining a high quality carcass may be a little difficult to achieve. I'm Jeff Keane and I'll be back in one minute to explain. Yesterday I told you about the decline in muscle or cutability in beef carcasses over the last 13 years according to the National Beef Quality Audit and annual USDA carcass data. But reversing the trend of beef with less cutability may not be as easy as it might seem. There has been a return to the use of British cattle breed genetics the last few years after many years of using the genetics of the Continental breeds. The British breeds will produce carcasses with more marbling that adds to tenderness and flavor but they have fewer genes for muscle than the Continental cattle. To produce a large percentage of carcasses with high cutability, rib eye area in a 775-pound carcass needs to be 14.1 square inches. A typical British-British crossbred cow has a rib eye area of 12.3 square inches, so to raise steers with the desired 14.1 square inch rib eye a producer would have to mate those cows with a bull with a yearling rib eye of at least 15.9 square inches. Even one of the Continental breeds with the largest rib eye measurements would only have 38% of its sires that would fit this criteria and only 3% of a popular British breed sires would qualify. While more muscling is needed in beef just selecting for one trait never produces overall quality carcasses. It wouldn't be a challenge if it were that easy. I'm Jeff Keane. BEEF February 2005