Beef carcasses in South Africa are classified, not graded. Classification describes the carcass by three attributes, age, fatness and conformation, and leaves the buyer to decide which combination suits a purpose. It does not rank one carcass above another.
Age is read from the teeth. A carcass is class A when the animal had no permanent incisors, AB with one or two permanent incisors, B with three to six, and C with more than six. Meat from younger carcasses tends to be more tender, so age is the attribute most buyers look at first.
Fatness is scored on the carcass from 0 to 6. Code 0 means no visible fat, code 1 very lean, and code 6 excessively over-fat. The codes most retail buyers specify fall in the middle of the scale, where there is enough fat cover to protect the meat in the chiller without excessive trimming.
Conformation describes the shape of the carcass, from very flat to very round, on a five-point scale. It indicates muscling and therefore the meat yield a deboner can expect.
The class is applied as a roller mark along the length of the carcass. The colour of the ink shows the age class at a glance: purple for A, green for AB, brown for B and red for C. The fatness code and the conformation code are printed with it.
Classification is carried out by trained classifiers at the abattoir. The South African Meat Industry Company (SAMIC) oversees the scheme on behalf of the industry, trains and audits classifiers and visits abattoirs to check that marks are applied consistently. South African Meat Industry Company (SAMIC) site visits keep carcass classifiers current.
When Morgan Beef quotes a carcass or a primal, the age class and the fatness code are part of the specification. The carcasses page describes the forms in which carcasses are supplied, and the article Reading a cut specification explains how the class appears on a specification sheet.