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By Flannery Team

Not all beef is created equal. Understanding the USDA Beef Grading Scale is important to determine beef quality levels, especially in today’s world where e-commerce is so widespread that you often have only pictures and words to judge something before purchasing.

USDA-graded beef sold at the retail level is categorized into different grades, such as Prime, Choice, and Select, with lower grades being used mainly in groud or processed meat products.

The beef grading scale has evolved over the years. Read on for a primer on the differences between today’s top beef grades and to hear my opinions based on over 60 years of experience.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

USDA Prime

USDA Prime sits atop the beef grading scale. USDA Prime beef is produced from young, well-fed beef cattle, which contributes to its abundant marbling and superior quality.

Marbling will present slightly differently depending on the cattle breed, but the absolute best USDA Prime steaks will be laced with thin flecks of marbling, the intramuscular fat, spaced evenly throughout the meat. This concentration and uniformity of marbling is what creates such a memorable dining experience. As the meat cooks, those veins of intramuscular fat help to flavor the meat and bring a level of tenderness that cannot be beaten. What sets the Prime apart from Choice and Select is the intensity of the marbling.Prime beef with marbling

You can find Prime beef in local boutique butcher shops, at upscale grocery stores or online, but very rarely do these places offer dry aged Prime beef, which is one area where Flannery Beef excels.

It’s somewhat accepted that about 2% of beef produced in the US is graded at this level. My belief is that presently the number is closer to 0.5%. Prime has been slowly declining over the years as ranchers are leaving their animals for longer periods of time on pasture alone. In my estimation, this is why the Prime grade needs to be confirmed with a second opinion.

If the grader assumes that about 2% of the group being graded will be Prime, then for every 1,000 heads, they will aim to designate 20 as Prime. But what if this particular lot is lower quality? Human nature will still lead the grader to look for the best 2%, and compared to the others, they will look better, so they will get Prime by default. The 2% benchmark is no longer operable in this scenario.

USDA Choice

USDA Choice is a beef grade that applies to approximately 10-15% of beef produced in the US. Choice beef is predominant on many mid-level restaurant menus since it’s more readily available and cheaper than Prime. As one of the higher grades of beef, you’ll see a higher degree of marbling and tenderness in Choice beef than you will in Select, but it’s still very hit-and-miss.

Your ‘A-Level’ cuts from Choice beef — Ribeye, New York, Filet, Porterhouse — will go well on the grill, though they will still present with a bit of a chew; however, a good dry aging program will go a long way to fix this.

USDA Select

USDA Select beef holds the bronze medal in the beef grading world, but in our opinion, it’s been lapped a couple of times by the higher two grades: Prime and Choice. USDA Select beef is fairly tender but has less marbling than Prime and Choice, making it less juicy and flavorful.

Approximately 65-70% of all meat produced in the United States will receive this marbling score. Select is also the most likely meat grade that you’ll see sold in your local grocery stores. More often than not what you’ll see in Select beef is a blank slate — virtually zero detectable marbling.

High-temperature cooking methods, such as grilling or searing, will cause steaks of this grade to toughen and won’t give you a memorable dining experience. That said, you can get away with Select for extremely gentle cooking methods like braising.

This grade is the “bread and butter” of the major producers because it can be considered a commodity product, and the commercial buyers are really not interested in quality, but the price. Minimal marbling often results in a higher yield of lean meat. This grade is the heart and soul of US exports to foreign markets and the primary grade level sold through major retailers.

History of the USDA Beef Grading System

The concept of grading beef quality began in the US in 1916 when the Department of Agriculture was tasked with implementing a system to categorize whole carcass beef quality. The reason for this was to aid large institutions, such as the military, hospitals, railroads, etc. to have uniform standards for purchasing. After a thorough review process that considered feedback from stakeholders, including beef producers, slaughterers, and retailers, the USDA revised standards and started stamping beef carcasses in May 1927.

Initially, grading was free and voluntary, and 12 months later moved to a fee basis. It quickly caught on since grading allowed smaller beef processing plants to compete with the much larger centralized plants.

In WWII, grading became mandatory as a facet of wartime price controls. The original grades of beef were: Prime, Choice, Good, Medium, Common, Cutter, and Canner.

In 1949, the Department of Agriculture formally altered the grade levels; Select became Choice, and Choice became Prime, and Prime kind of floated above the others. Over the years, there has been a bit of blurring of the lines between Choice and Prime and the list of beef grades has been shortened to Prime, Choice, Select, and Standard and Commercial.

Standard and Commercial grades of beef are often sold as store-brand meat. Lower-quality grades, such as Utility, Cutter, and Canner, are mainly used in processed foods and for ground beef.

An interesting sidebar to this is that the term Select replaced Good fairly recently, in 1987, in an attempt to improve the public’s perception of this beef grade. I personally think that was about the time grading standards began to soften.

How the USDA Grades Beef Today

Presently, grading by the USDA is voluntary at the packinghouse level, but almost all major producers are grading their cattle using a subjective characteristic assessment process. While only the USDA can use the terms above, graded cattle need not be marketed under the designation given by the USDA. Many of the larger (and smaller) supermarket chains will introduce a trademark name to avoid the “Select” designation. As a rule of thumb, any beef rated high enough to be either USDA Prime or USDA Choice will, in fact, be marketed as such.

At the heart of it, what gives a particular piece of meat the grade is how much marbling it contains. Other factors are involved, such as maturity, firmness, texture, but the main player is the distribution of marbling. The grading process takes place at the slaughterhouse and is overseen by the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Services branch.

Before the carcasses are broken down into primals, a cut is made between the 11th and 12th ribs, which will give the grader the ability to visually inspect the marbling levels. As the grader goes down the line, they use their judgment with or without template aids to stamp the beef carcasses with the corresponding grade using food-grade vegetable dye, which gradually fades. The grading process also involves determining the yield grade, which assesses the amount of usable lean meat on the carcass.

If a particular carcass is graded Prime, every part will be Prime from the most tender to the least tender cut. For commercial reasons, the meatpackers will only segregate certain cuts as Prime (about 30% of the whole) and will combine the rest into lots marked “Choice or higher,” so even though the whole beef is Prime, many cuts don’t travel with the designation.

The USDA Grade is Not the Full Story

One thing that we deal with in the beef industry — alluded to in our discussion of the USDA’s name change from Good to Select — is more leniency in the grading standards. That quite often means receiving a product that we do not believe deserves the USDA Prime quality grade.

On average, approximately 15% of USDA Prime beef that we bring in, we choose not to sell as USDA Prime because, in our opinion, it doesn’t meet the pre-1987 definition of Prime. These findings are also why we at Flannery Beef are fanatical about only accepting beef from certain producers.

We have received USDA Choice beef from an establishment in the Midwest that was of a higher quality level than USDA Prime beef coming out of a plant in the Northwest. Whether the error in judgment could be traced to a grader with little experience or perhaps trying to come up with something in an overall low-quality batch of cattle, it’s important to remember that the given grade is not the end-all, which is just one reason why we remain so diligent in our selection process at Flannery Beef.

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