Standardizing the Canadian beef grading system with the United States would be a mistake, says the president of the Canada Beef Export Federation.
“There has been some interest in further revising the Canadian beef grading program to fully match the U.S. (program) with the idea that it would enhance Canada’s international quality perception,” Ted Haney said.
“What this research clearly points out is that that would be an error.”
The research he refers to is the Beef Quality Perceptions Audit, a survey that found international importers and retailers have a strong preference for beef with bright red meat with white fat and firm texture.
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The Canadian grading system is credited in the survey for helping ensure that these attributes are included in the country’s top quality grades.
In contrast, the U.S. grading system allows its top quality grades to include darker colours of meat, yellow fat and a greater range of texture.
“Therefore the real confirmation to some degree is that the positive points of differentiation that the Canadian grading system provides is of value to our industry and should likely be retained, if not even further enhanced,” Haney said.
The purpose of the CBEF-commissioned survey was to provide “insight into current perceptions and attitudes regarding imported and domestic beef quality attributes within each priority market,” he added.
Six export markets were surveyed: Japan; Taiwan; South Korea; Hong Kong-Macau; the United States and Mexico. In total, 965 respondents participated in the study, including international importers, distributors, directors of meat operations, merchandisers, executive chefs and meat purveyors.
The survey found that more than half the respondents have received beef with “quality issues” such as yellow fat, darker meat colour and soft texture. The survey also asked respondents to rank certain factors that influence their beef purchases.
The top four were eating quality, BSE testing, country of origin and price.
“So, from the top, eating quality really does go back to that grading system that gives the best description of what those eating qualities are,” Haney said.
Rob McNabb, general manager of operations for the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, agreed that the Canadian grading system might help sales to international markets, but noted the biggest market for Canadian beef after the domestic one is the U.S.
“So we have to be careful that we don’t over-differentiate or it’s going to backfire on us,” he added.
McNabb said the Canadian beef industry’s challenge in the U.S. market has been to receive recognition of the equivalency between the two grading standards. If the marketplace recognized the Canadian grading system as superior, Canadian exporters would take advantage of that.
“But we’re getting discounted going into the U.S.,” he said of U.S. buyers who don’t always consider Canadian beef to be on par with U.S. product. Canadian beef needs to be recognized as having the same value, but it doesn’t have to be the exact same product of identical grading systems, he added.
McNabb said the question of standardizing Canadian beef grading to the U.S. system goes back about 30 years, and at one time full harmonization was the desired goal.
“I think we need to distinguish what it means in the North American context versus in the global context,” he said.
