Claire Powell • Red Meat
Beef is for eating… With import pressure set to intensify a fresh focus on UK beef quality is needed, argues Perthshire-based journalist, broadcaster and Club member Claire Powell
“British beef was becoming more about ticked boxes and paperwork than eating quality.”
WHEN a piece of beef lands on a plate, the most important beefy consideration to the person wielding the cutlery is – the meat’s performance between teeth and on taste buds – the beef’s tenderness, taste and succulence. Eating is the ultimate beef test. Where the beef came from, the animal’s colour, size, weight, bulginess of bottom, name of Daddy, how many rosettes it won and how many labels were stuck on the raw product, all pale into insignificance. All that matters in the final “field to fork” stage is how the beef eats. Yet, the EUROP carcass grading system has little correlation to eating quality. And let’s face it – British beef’s “Elephant in the Room” is inconsistent eating quality. It is little wonder that the eating quality of a 21st Century British steak can be a bit of a gamble – with our higgledy piggldey variety of breeds and production systems – a higgledy piggldey variety of beef is inevitable. Beef is not cheap, but bad beef is VERY expensive. Equally, good beef is excellent value. It is special – with anticipation being part of the enjoyment. So when it disappoints, it is remembered, and can take a long time to be forgiven! And disappointed beef eaters have a wide choice of alternatives.
Work on food and farming television programmes featuring pasture to plate ‘stories’ brought me into contact with meat processors, retailers and restaurateurs throughout the UK, plus some overseas. Almost all expressed concern that British beef was becoming more about ticked boxes and paperwork than eating quality. Over the past two decades plus, the hangover from BSE has restricted Britain’s access to some lucrative overseas beef markets. Thankfully, significant overseas doors are re-opening, including Japan, which lifted its 1996-imposed ban in 2019. Japanese trigger Ironically, prior to BSE, the Japanese had been keen to import Aberdeen Angus beef from Scotland. While there was little hope then of there being enough Aberdeen Angus cattle in Scotland to meet Japanese demand, BSE shattered all hopes of supplying this lucrative market. Japan found an alternative Aberdeen Angus beef supplier – New Zealand has never had a case of BSE and Aberdeen Angus is the numerically dominant breed. To obtain a consistent supply of exactly the right type of grain-finished, heavily marbled beef that their customers wanted, in 1991 Japanese food company Itoham, working with (All photos: Claire Powell)
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08 • The Farmers Club Summer/Harvest 2021
