356 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



I want to give you a chance to look at the side of these two car- 

 casses. There is what you want to notice. I want you to get the 

 comparison of these two carcasses, so far as the outside is concerned. 

 There you have fat on the outside, and on that one over there in 

 practically every place the bundles of muscle fibre are showing 

 through ; it does not matter where we make a cross section, where we 

 cut the carcass, you will find that is the truth. I am going to re- 

 move the prime ribs of both carcasses. Now, the place to cut the 

 prime ribs from the plate will depend somewhat upon the thick- 

 ness of the carcasses. We generally cut where the meat runs the 

 thinnest or keep this bundle of muscle fibre, which we want to use 

 for roasts. When an animal is fleshed over the side, over the ribs, 

 over the side, the butcher can cut you the ribs longer; that is the 

 reason we want that conformation of the beef animal on foot, and 

 you cannot take any old animal of any description and type and 

 make a good meat animal out of him. This is an economical and 

 convenient way of cutting a carcass, though not the only way. 



Now, there is a cross section of that plate. Take the plate from 

 the other quarter. We want that thickness carried well down over 

 the side. You will notice when we come to these two carcasses, 

 this one over here is considerably thinner. You can see for yourself 

 the difference that exists in these two cuts of meat. Notice there 

 all along we have plenty of fat, enough to make it a good, tender, 

 juicy piece of meat, even though it comes from the plate, whereas, 

 in this carcass you have little or no fat, which is bound to make 

 that piece of meat tough ; yet a great many people go to the market 

 and will buy this piece of meat and then think they are buying meat 

 economically; they are buying more bone and a much poorer quality 

 of meat. You notice, further, that there is only a difference of 38 

 cents a hundred pounds, so far as the packer's price is concerned, 

 between this carcass and that. The packer paid 93 cents a hundred 

 pounds less for that animal than he did for this one. Now, from 

 his own personal point of view, he paid too much money for that one 

 if he bought this at the right price. If he bought that at the right 

 price, he bought this too low. 



Now, the next cut is to remove the prime ribs. I am going to take 

 off the seven ribs, because that will give you some idea of what 

 this portion of the carcass looks like. In cutting meat, there are sev- 

 eral rules that we try to follow, so far as possible. One of them 

 is to separate the higher priced or the thicker cuts of meat from 

 the thin or inferior cuts of meat. The second is to cut across the 

 grain of the meat so far as possible, and the third is to use your 

 knife in cutting meat and use the saw to cut the bone 

 because if you try to cut the meat itself with the saw, you ai'e 

 going to gnash it and tear it all to pieces, and if you try to cut 

 the bone with your knife, you will find that the knife will not 

 hold an edge, and besides that, you cannot make a smooth cut. That 

 plate may seem like a suggestion to a kindergarten, but it is not, it 

 is something that a great many people don't stop to realize. We 

 are cutting every one of these cuts, making every one of these cuts 

 in identically the same place. You can see for yourself the dif- 

 ference that exists. This, of course, is a somewhat smaller carcass, 

 yet I could not possibly cut it down lower because it does not pos- 

 sess near the thickness, even there, that this possesses. 



