Mythbuster Monday gets to the bottom of CAB’s acceptance rate hike
You’ve heard this before: Often times if it seems too good to be true, it is. Like in the case of low-fat ice cream that claims the same taste as the original. (Whatever you do, don’t buy it folks. Get the real deal—trust me!) But sometimes the stars line up and you get a “too good to be true” moment that is, ironically, genuine. Just like the sunshiny, wind-free, 70° day I spent in Colorado in February.
Or like the rise in Certified Angus Beef ® (CAB®) acceptance rates.
Following that theme, Laura recently picked up this myth from the road:
Myth—Since CAB has had such a dramatic rise in acceptance rate, you must have lowered your standards.
Fact—CAB is a quality-based program and is following a similar nationwide upswing in cattle grading. Two years ago our own Larry Corah and Mark McCully authored a white paper that looked at various explanations for that spike, including good feeding conditions, changes in compositional endpoint, more heifers in the harvest mix and,perhaps most encouraging,changes in genetics.
So this is what U.S. quality grade trends look like: