Agricultural News
When It Comes to Beef Quality, Flavor Drives Eating Satisfaction
Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:14:23 CST
What does it take to earn consistent profits as a beef producers in today's climate?
"Don't sacrifice pounds for quality, I guess, would be my biggest point," says Jay Riscky of Freedman Meats. "We've got a generation of people coming into this- into eating beef. They're eating burgers. They're eating in casual dining and they're not experiencing that richness, that quality of a good steak."
Riscky is a food service distributor and says if ever there was a time to focus on quality, it is now.
"One thing that our consumers are seeing is they don't just want meat on the plate. When they are paying extraordinary amounts of money for beef right now they want eating experiences they don't forget. We see that so many people when they leave the restaurant they forget about how much it cost and just remember whether it was good or not."
The most recent national Beef Quality Audit reveals that is most likely based on how the beef tastes.
Jeff Savell of Texas A&M University says, "The other thing that I think is important for cattle producers to think about is being able to meet eating satisfaction which we don't really directly measure in the national Beef Quality Audit, but we get the information back from the end users and their concerns about eating satisfaction, especially driven by flavor."
Tenderness used to rule, but according to work at Colorado State, as tenderness improves, it is less of a factor.
"What we've found in this is that flavor is a bigger driver than probably what we thought in the past," Savell says. "And I think if you look at the national beef tenderness survey which was released a couple of years ago and we see where the baseline tenderness looks so well, so good for the U.S. beef population, somewhere in there there has to be something else that then comes into play. And if it's going to be pretty tender, then what else are you going to do to drive satisfaction? And flavor will probably play a big role."
Cattlemen who want to get in on both goals should keep marbling in mind for all breeding and management decisions.
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