We think about US lamb quality grades.
It's driven by three things, 'Kay?
They're not going to tell us how old they are, all right?
But there's a big difference in value and eating quality between an
old sheep, and a young lamb, big difference in eating quality and value.
So, this is a young lamb and how we know that is that when this lamb was
harvested these front two feet here, what we call
the trotters, they broke at this epiphyseal growth plate.
If they wouldn't of bro, broken there, if they
would've broken and it would've looked like a spool or
looked like a jagged edge then that would have come
from an old sheep which ultimately would be called mutton.
Big difference in eating quality in those products.
So that's one component to USDA quality grading.
The other components is that we would look here within the
flanks and see how much streaks of fat are within there.
And this would be average choice flank streaking is what that would be.
The amount of fat streaking you see within the flanks,
it would be indicative of kind of what we see when
we look directly at the marbling, within the ribeye of a
beef carcass, like we'll show you here, in a second, 'Kay?
So, those that have a little more flank streaking is preferred.
So, we've talked about the maturity.
We've talked about flank streaking.
And then the third component is just to look at the confirmation of the carcass.
And that's the width as compared to length.
Those that are wider and thicker relative to
their length or higher conforming, but we put more
emphasis on this flank streaking and circling on the,
the maturity than, than we do with the confirmation.
Collectively this carcass would probably be low choice to average choice.