Most folks understand the concept of carcass quality grade. They’re familiar with the terms Prime, Choice, Select and Standard. They know those terms relate to the amount and distribution of intramuscular fat (marbling) visible in the ribeye muscle. They probably know that maturity, or the animal’s physiological age, also applies when determining quality grade.

So they might know the aforementioned grades are applied to carcasses from young animals — fed steers and heifers — but not to carcasses from animals older than 42 months of age.

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