The night before the Summitcrest Angus Bull Sale last week, they brought in a couple of speakers for the supper they have the night before. One of them was Steven Shackelford of the US Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Nebraska. They have developed a camera that determines beef carcass grading while the line is in motion. They believe it will be used in the near future by the USDA grades to determine beef carcass grades. Outside of the fact that the video of the guy using it looks like some 50s science fiction movie, it is quite a neat tool. They seem to be developing another instrument for the determination of tenderness along much the same manner. What I found most interesting was the fact that the speaker indicated where tenderness was currently of most interest to the packing industry was in adding value to select cuts of meat. I had hoped that they were ready to look at adding value to cuts above that. All things in time, I suppose.