There is a bunch of fresh meat inside hundreds of grocery stores all across the US. I have never, ever, been inside a grocery store in my life and have seen meat not USDA prime.
First off who is actually rating this meat? I cannot fathom that every farm is shipping their meat to an USDA lab where each carcass is tested, graded, then sent to the grocer/butcher.
So how does meat actually get its grade? What happens to meat that doesn’t pass? And how does the consumer actually believe that every cut of meat truly *is* being inspected and that the “USDA” sticker isn’t just the equivalent of slapping a meaningless “organic” label on the package.
In: Economics
Meat is inspected and graded while being processed at the slaughterhouse, not at the farms. There are full time inspectors that inspect every carcass, by law.
One I can actually answer. At every meat processing plant, there are FDA inspectors. Some have many. Their job is to ensure the plant is clean, animals are disease free, and to grade the meat. There will literally be an inspector that will grade and stamp the meat as it comes out of the slaughterhouse.
I worked at a processing plant just out of high school for a few months. Hated every minute of it. But I have respect for the FDA inspectors.
One time, while I was working a piece, of meat fell on the floor. FDA inspector (whose job it was to constantly walk the floor) saw it and stopped the line. When he hits the button, all work on all stations stops until whatever is wrong is fixed. I heard it cost like $10,000 for every minute the line stopped. And that was 30+ years ago. The meat is picked up and taken to a cleaning station to be washed and inspected by the FDA, then put back on the line.
Oh, if you think it is gross that meat hit the floor and put back into production. The whole plant is washed and sanitized every day. You can’t even walk onto the floor without stepping into a sanitizer solution.
Edit: not every cut of meat is inspected, but every cow is. So when we processed, we would do all select cows for x amount of head, then we’d run choice for x amount of head, etc. You might run 200 heads of select, that’s 400 sides and a lot of that is processed as hamburger, then you’d do 500 head of choice and then maybe 100 head of prime.
Every farm *is* shipping off their meat to a USDA lab. Well, sorta.
Farms don’t usually slaughter their own meat. Instead, when the time comes, they send the cow to an abattoir or slaughterhouse, which is a facility where cows are killed and the carcasses are processed into the meat products which will eventually make their way to stores and restaurants. Abattoirs can *voluntarily* have a trained evaluator from the USDA grade each cow based on how old it is and how much marbling (or fat) is in the meat from it. Based on these factors, a grade is assigned to the meat. When you consider how much meat you get from a cow and how much effort goes into turning a cow to meat products, it’s not that hard to have it assessed like this. Now, this *is* a voluntary process, but it’s a common one.
There’s eight grades used in USDA classification. Prime, Choice, Select, Standard, Commercial, Utility, Cutter and Canner. About 2.9% of meat ends up as Prime, *but* Choice is really common in retail too, and about half of cows end up as Choice – because farms can choose how they raise their cows and when they send them to the abattoir in order to maximise the amount of cows that end up here. Select is pretty common in stores too, but Standard and below are usually not in stores – which is why the names imply that. Of course, these aren’t useless – if you’ve ever bought tinned beef soup, you probably got a lower grade for cost reasons.
So you’re actually asking two separate questions.
One is about the grade of said meat, the other is about passing inspection.
FSIS is the sub division of the USDA that is on site for inspection for meat and poultry products from slaughter to packaging. When you see the USDA establishment number and mark of inspection that ensures that the product is presumably safe from adulteration. There are many guidelines USDA establishments must follow in order to be able to apply the mark of inspection. To list a few of the requirements; have FSIS personnel in plant during every production day, adequate HACCP plans, record keeping, in plant testing, and so on.
9 CFR part 300-500 is regarding meat and poultry regulations.
As for grading that grade gives you a “snapshot” of what the entire carcass quality could be. A grading station would look at intramuscular fat and animal age and determine the grade, prime, choice select, and so on.
All of those grades are passed for human consumption.
It’s not as if a Select cut didn’t pass inspection. It’s just a quality grade.
Anything that does not pass inspection through FSIS does not enter commerce. It is condemned and denatured on site.
Upon entering the Slaughterhouse, hogs specifically are subsequently slaughtered. They then get hung up on a transport chain. The USDA usually has someone roaming the plant, but once they get the clean harvest floor, there are three USDA inspection stations. One station to inspect heads and brains after the head and neck have been severed. Then they get their Internals removed, where a team of USDA inspectors inspect the offal for signs of disease. If they find one, they mark it, and if the meat is affected, they “throw it out” (render it). After that is final rail inspection where USDA inspects body cavity. Then the meat is finally weighed and THIS is the weight they pay the farmers. Source: Was a Kill-Floor Maintenance.
There’s literally no way every single piece of beef you’ve ever seen in every store has been prime. In fact, most likely a relatively small portion of what you see is prime. I would encourage you to look closer and see that some will be “choice” and perhaps some will be “select”.
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