By Jessica Domel
News Editor
Should standards for beef carcass grades be revised? The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA AMS) is asking the public to comment on a petition to amend the standards to include dentition and documentation of age.
Current standards include skeletal and muscular evidence to determine maturity grouping.
Proposed changes, according to USDA, would allow carcasses of grain-fed steers and heifers to be included in the youngest maturity group if determined to be less than 30 months old by dentition or documentation, regardless of skeletal evidences of maturity.
Commodity standards like these are used by AMS to facilitate orderly marketing of U.S. agricultural products.
According to AMS, several industry stakeholders indicated the beef standards should be revised “to allow for alternative methods of determining carcass maturity grouping for the purposes of official USDA beef quality grading.”
Comments may be made on Regulations.gov, emailed to beefcarcassrevisions@ams.usda.gov or mailed to Beef Carcass Revisions, Standardization Branch, Quality Assessment Division; Livestock, Poultry, and Seed Program; Agricultural Marketing Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture; 1400 Independence Ave., SW; Room 3932-S, STOP 0258; Washington, D.C. 20250-0258.
All comments should reference the docket number (AMS-LPS-16-0060), the date of submission and the page number of the issue of the Federal Register.
The deadline to submit comments is Monday, Oct. 24.
Texas Farm Bureau does not currently have policy on beef carcass grade guidelines. American Farm Bureau Federation is reviewing the rule and has encouraged state organizations to weigh in on the proposal.