AMS Amends Grade Standards for Beef

The Agricultural Marketing Service is amending its U.S. Standards for Grades of Carcass Beef, in a final rule, “to allow dentition and documentation of actual age as additional methods of classifying maturity of carcasses presented to [the U.S. Department of Agriculture] for official quality grading,” it said. Current standards include only skeletal and muscular evidence as a determination of classifying maturity of carcasses for the purposes of official USDA quality grading, AMS had said in its underlying proposal issued in June (see 1706160030). The final rule takes effect Dec. 18.