USDA's Remote Grading Pilot

Building on a pilot project from last year and allowing small processors to take a picture and send a photo into a greater USDA Secretary of Agriculture. Tom Vilsack recently announced while he was in Colorado, that they will make the program available to all processors and allow for carcass photos to be taken and sent in for grading.

“So, today we're announcing what we refer to as the Remote Grading Pilot. It's going to be available to any facility, any processing facility that does not currently have a full or part time grading system in place. So anybody who meets that definition is eligible to participate in this program, it's going to be same level of compliance. Right now. About 90% of graded beef in this country is done in large packinghouses. We'd like to change that percentage, because that gives producers and that processing small processing opportunity expanded opportunity.”

Vilsack estimates that it costs a packing house $114 an hour to have an in-person greater USDA. We'll be hosting a webinar on January 25 at 3 pm to explain how the program works. For more information on the program and the webinar, log on to AMS.gov. That's AMS.gov I'm Lorrie Boyer reporting.