OTTAWA — More of Canada’s cattle are achieving the top marbling grades of Prime and AAA but that accomplishment has come at the expense of red meat yield.
Last year, 99 percent of cattle killed in federally inspected plants were graded, said Marty Carpenter, president of the Canadian Beef Grading Agency.
Last year, 1.9 percent graded Prime, 69 percent made AAA, 36 percent were AA and 1.9 percent fell into the A category.
However, among those making AAA, 14 percent were yield grade one, followed by 21.5 percent yield grade two and 23.4 yield grade three.
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“Everyone is shooting for AAA but we need to refine it,” he said at the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association annual meeting in Ottawa March 21-23.
Sometime this year, Canada will move from three to five yield grades to bring the system more in line with the United States and provide a better settlement mechanism for producers.
Yield is an estimation of the percentage of the carcass that is red meat. Yield grade one is leanest. This is measured with a ruler designed in 1992 by Agriculture Canada at the Lacombe Research Centre. The ruler will be redesigned.
The holdup has been waiting for regulations to be completed within the Safe Food for Canadians Act.
“We have been actively inquiring on the status of those regulations for some time,” he said.
It is hoped the act would be implemented in late spring of 2018 with six months transition period before it is in place and underway.
Canada’s most recent meat quality audit noted a significant change in yield grades where animals are getting fatter, said Mark Klassen of the CCA in a recent webinar.
“Yield grade is trending in a less than ideal manner,” he said.
Carcasses are bigger and fatter and that turns into a loss because external fat is trimmed away. Fat depth is up by 76 percent since the last audit about five years ago.
In 2000 the yield grade ones were appearing 63 percent of the time but by 2010 about half achieved that quality level. In the 2016-17 period about 37 percent made yield grade one.
Another issue for meat buyers is the seasonality of grade-outs, said Carpenter.
There are often fewer AAA carcasses in spring and that can create some challenges as more large companies switch to Canada AAA on their shelves.
