The importance of knowing how to grade slaughter livestock

Whether you're a big or small producer, knowing how to grade your lifestock is essential for the profitability of your business

- Shane Brody

After 30 or so years in commercial farming and having been a buyer of livestock for abattoirs and for my own livestock speculation business and butchery enterprises, I learnt some valuable lessons about ascertaining the grade of livestock when it comes to what is desirable to the red meat markets.

Essentially, buying livestock that doesn’t make the ‘slaughter grade’ can be a costly exercise for you as a buyer who works on commission, and for the enterprises that you’re buying for.

For example, if a client wants 500 mutton carcasses with a fat grade of ‘2’ or ‘3’, which are the most desirable grades sought by consumers, and you as a buyer make a mistake by purchasing leaner ‘1’ grade animals that are less desirable to consumers as these animals don’t have sufficient body fat covering, the loss to your customer can be as much as R200 per sheep. This, considering that 500 sheep were requested, can result in an overall loss of R100 000.

Worse is that your client was needing these sheep carcasses to fill their supermarket or butchery fridges, and you as the buyer let them down – this can detrimentally affect the customer’s business and give you a bad name as a buyer.