CONSUMERS More choices beef up the market competition

Beef is more expensive depending on the grade.
By ED MURRIETA
SCRIPPS HOWARD
It's what's for dinner.
That's the beef industry's sales pitch.
But what is "it"? Is it prime? Choice? Corn-fed? Grass-fed? Angus? Certified Angus? Hormone-free? Free-range? Wet aged? Dry aged? Is it that expensive Japanese stuff that makes foodies drool like Homer Simpson in a Hereford harem?
Really, what's the beef? Or, more precisely, what's the beef-marketing program? With high-protein diets pushing beef demand to record levels, marketing has moved beyond the commodity corral into the branded arena. Read meat labels today and you'll find more than just USDA grading -- it's Certified Angus Beef, it's Safeway's Rancher's Reserve, it's Albertson's Blue Ribbon, it's Misty Isle Farms, Niman Ranch and scores of other brands.
Confused? Patti Brumbach, executive director of the Washington State Beef Commission, thinks consumers should be thankful.
"Some of it can be just marketing, but when you put your name on a product you have to stand behind the quality or you will not get the repeat purchase," Brumbach says.
"I think it's healthy for consumers because they get more choices," says Jan Busboom, a professor of meat science at Washington State University in Pullman. "With branded programs, there's a lot more feedback to the producer. Years ago, the producers' selection programs and management systems were based upon how they could sell more beef for less cost. Now that we're getting feedback on quality and tenderness, beef producers are incorporating that into their selection and feeding decisions. That's good."
But it also drives up the price of dinner. At one supermarket in Tacoma, for example, a commodity ribeye steak with no USDA-grading information on the label retails for $8.98 per pound in the packaged-meat section. A Certified Angus Beef brand ribeye in the butcher's case is $11.98, although customers have to know that CAB meat is USDA choice.
Grades
Since 1923, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has graded beef as Prime, Choice, Select, all the way down to Utility, based on the amount of marbling -- the flavor-giving, tenderizing fat -- in muscle cuts. Approximately 2 percent of all beef produced and sold in the United States carries the Prime grade, which must have a minimum of 8 percent marbling. More than 50 percent of beef falls into the broad Choice category, which includes benchmarks for moderate, modest and small marbling. Thirty-four percent of Choice grade falls into the latter marbling classification, just above Select.
"I don't directly remember what beef was like 50 years ago, but there is no question that in the 1950s a lot of the beef in the U.S. had more marbling," Busboom says. "In the '70s and the '80s, all the branded-beef programs except Certified Angus Beef were lean programs. And almost all of them have failed, whereas Certified Angus Beef is quite strong."
Or as Brumbach says, "Angus is gold."
Certified Angus Beef is a dominant meat-and-butcher-counter brand and is served in premium steakhouses. Certified Angus Beef's specifications for marbling and maturity are certified by the USDA, and most of its meat is Prime grade or within the top realm of Choice.
Kobe beef
If Angus is gold, then Kobe is platinum. Kobe beef, or more accurately, Wagyu beef, hails from Japan and is among the most salivated-over and most expensive meat on the market, fetching up to $100 per pound.
Wagyu beef is prized for its excessive marbling and clean flavor -- some old-timers claim Wagyu beef tastes like beef used to taste before industrialized production, hormones and the quest for leanness took over.
But don't believe the Kobe Myth: While some hobby producers may feed their stock beer to stimulate their appetites during hot summer months and others may massage their cows with sake to make their coats more attractive at market, large-scale Japanese producers and American-style Kobe producers are not giving their cattle a frat boy's dream life.
"... We market with full disclosure but we don't go out of our way to dispel the myth," says Jay Theiler, marketing director of Snake River Farms, a Boise, Idaho, producer of American-style Kobe, whose steaks and hamburgers are sold at upscale supermarkets and upper-end restaurants.
Snake River Farms is among a handful of American-style Kobe beef producers in the United States.
American-style Kobe cattle are fed a mixture of grains like corn and barley, plus roughage like alfalfa hay. They're fed longer than conventionally raised cattle -- up to 500 days as opposed to 120 days.
This long-and-slow method increases the amount of marbling in the meat.
The USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service recently culled industry consensus for voluntary labeling standards on marketing claims related to feeding, aging and geographic sourcing. Once the standards wend through USDA bureaucracy -- an agency official wouldn't guess when that would be -- a producer that claims its beef is 100 percent grass-fed and complies with a process to back it will earn a USDA verification stamp on its label.