Yet, he says, the NCBA Beef Quality Audit (Figure 7) set an ideal consist as being 7% Prime, 29% Upper Choice, 33% Lower Choice, 31% Select and 0% Standard. The actual consist, however, is 1.5% Prime, 18% Upper Choice, 35% Low Choice, 37% Select and 6% Standard. The shortfall, the audit estimated, amounts to $26.81/head in lost opportunity due to substandard USDA Quality Grade.

“That's our challenge as an industry in terms of trying to correct that,” Corah says. While there's been a positive “genetic impact” over the past decade in addressing those concerns, an offsetting factor is that cattle are being managed “in a fashion that compromises their ability to grade,” he says.

Among these, he lists:

• Health. Sick cattle don't hit the premium-quality levels.

• Lifetime nutrition.

• Marbling. It's a lifetime event that encompasses handling, management and health throughout the animal's life.

• Inappropriate implant strategies.

• Lack of sorting of cattle based on compositional end point, which leads to under-finished or overly fat cattle.

  Looking down the road, Corah sees four challenges that will affect the industry's competitiveness.

• Can we compete globally? Can the U.S. maintain its position as the home of premium beef? Today, competitiveness is constrained by mainly political issues, Corah says. “While the domestic consumer is critical to this industry, our ability to compete in the global climate is a must.”

• The opportunities, and potential challenges inherent in the coming of instrument grading.

• The potential of Level II beta agonists — partitioning agents that add lean at the expense of marbling — to negatively impact quality grade and tenderness.

  “So many of our cattle sit right on the line, and it looks like the Level II's will move marbling between 20 and 30 units. That is going to move a lot of the Premium Choice cattle down into Low Choice, and a lot of the Prime into Premium Choice. We think 20-25% of our supply could be threatened with widespread adoption of the Level II beta agonists.”

• The economics of feed costs, particularly as affected by high grain costs.

  “If you put cattle through a growing program of daily gains under 1.75 or 2 lbs., quality grade will start to suffer. That's kind of a magical figure, and you'll start losing quality grade no matter the growing program — silage, hay, grass, wheat pasture, etc. It will have an impact,” Corah says.

Angelo Fili, Executive VP of Greater Omaha Packing Company. Greater Omaha Packing Company is one of the largest privately owned beef processing plants in the country. Founded in 1920, the firm processes 15,000 head of cattle/week and books $960 million in annual sales. It employs 720 people and ranks fifth nationally in beef slaughter and processing.

A 30-year veteran of the beef industry, Fili has served in roles from butcher to executive management. His tenure includes stints with seven different packing concerns. He jokes, “If you drive by a beef plant, I probably worked there.”

Greater Omaha Packing Company is a Certified Hereford Beef and CAB supplier. Among its quality tenets are a “test and hold” policy for E. coli O157:H7 on all carcasses and grind material, all meat is traceable to farm of origin, and the facility does not produce bone-in product from cattle older than 30 months of age.

Fili says Greater Omaha Packing prides itself on long-term relationships, with some cattle-supplier relationships stretching back more than eight decades. Its products are marketed worldwide, but the company primarily services the lucrative specialty markets of the East and West Coast. It's among a handful of U.S. operations that provides non-hormone treated beef to Europe.

While quality is often defined as a tasty steak, Fili says quality beef “sells in many ways,” pointing to a list of 40 chains that includes everything from McDonald's to Applebee's.

“A lot of people do a lot of different things with product. They don't just make a beef steak for the middle of the plate. Papa John's, Chick-fil-A, Dairy Queen — these are large growing companies that really don't ask us whether the product is Choice, Select or no-roll,” he says.

While beef grading is based on sight — visible marbling — Fili says, “Many sales are also based on sound. It's the story behind the product, like organic, natural or kosher, but all repeat customers are based on taste. They have to like what they've eaten.

“And dishes like stroganoff, fajitas, pot roast — even literally entire cuisines such as Mexican — don't ask a question about marbling or tenderness,” he adds. “That's because a fajita uses a 3½-in.-long piece of beef that is ¼-in.-wide. Fat is seen as a defect in a product such as that.”

He says each packer serves a certain end user, who generally has his own purposes for that product. Consistency is the key.

“As long as the beef herd produces similar animals in size and conformation, that marble and grade moderately well — meaning 60+% Choice — then we know where to market the different products.”

Outlying cattle, particularly those over 1,000 lbs., create massive problems.

“From my observation and standpoint as a harvester of your product, I think the product that we make in the U.S. is actually very repeatable, especially in the Midwest. We're fortunate to have plants only on the I-80 corridor, which has a tendency to be a 55-70% Choice range. The I-70 corridor registers about 10-15% less, while the I-40 grid that runs through Texas might be might be 8 or 10% less than that.”

He suggests to producers that they learn about their packers' needs and the markets they supply. And he points to the tremendous potential for U.S. beef in foreign markets.

“There are more Rolex watches sold in China than in Switzerland today. The minute a country like China decides it wants hamburgers, the minute they figure out this situation of taste and decide they're going to eat even a little bit more beef, we couldn't supply all those numbers. I see customers for every bit of beef we produce,” he says.