Published: September 29, 2008 12:01 pm      

Meats judging team to compete with nation’s best

Texas’ top FFA meats judging team will be gunning for No. 1 in the United States when Grandview vocational agriculture students fly north for the national competition.

The national meats judging event will be Oct. 24 on the campus of the University of Illinois at Champagne as part of the FFA convention Oct. 23-26 in Indianapolis.

The Grandview team consists of juniors Justin Clopton and Tanner Schmidt, sophomore Mallorie Phelps and graduates Loni Woolley and Roddy Looper. Woolley is a freshman at Texas Tech and Looper a freshman at Texas Wesleyan.

In addition, Lara Davis, now a sophomore at West Texas A&M, will represent Grandview in the national agriculture sales proficiency contest.

Also on hand from Grandview will be chapter officers senior Shea McKinnerney and junior Sarah Howell. McKinnerney, Howell and the members of the meats judging team will accept the chapter’s national two-star rating for the eighth year in a row.

Meats judging from an FFA perspective is unlike meats judging from the viewpoint of a supermarket shopper.

“Within the three species — beef, lamb and pork — there are about 140 cuts of meat,” said Randy Looper, Grandview’s longtime ag teacher. “There will be 40 on the contest list to look at and identify. You identify the species, the part of the carcass, and then the retail cut name.”

Contestants are asked to issue USDA quality grades to the meats, no easy task.

“That’s one of the toughest parts,” Looper said. “They also [assign] yield grade, the approximate yield of boneless retail cuts in grades 1 through 5.

“They have to break the grades down in thirds. If the grade is choice, it’s either high choice, average choice or low choice. You have to do that on every grade. They’re scored on how close they get to the judges’ official score.”

Preparation is intense.

“We’re preparing for the written test right now,” Looper said. “The test book is called Yellow Pages, answers to questions that consumers have about meats and poultry. There are more sections to the book at national than at state.

“There are also math problems. For instance, you’ve got all types of cuts, and you’re asked to make a ground beef product with 18 percent fat. You figure out which meats would be cheapest to use.”

Looper likes his team’s chances. Texas teams generally finish in the Top 5 or Top 10, he said.

Grandview won state on April 26 with 2,177 points to second place Wellman-Union’s 2,153. Individually, Woolley was first with 745 points, Roddy Looper third with 729, Phelps 31st with 703 and Clopton 43rd with 694.

“This is the first time we’ve been to nationals in meats judging,” Randy Looper said. “The last couple of years, we’ve been in the top 10 in state. Everything came together in the past year.”

The two-star chapter rating is also something to crow about.

“That’s based on everything you do throughout the year,” Looper said. “You document it and have photographs to verify what you’ve done. About 3 to 4 percent of Texas chapters get to go [to Indianapolis for recognition]. Nationally, 1 to 2 percent of chapters are recognized.

“The ratings are three-star, two-star and one-star. Three-star is really hard to get. This will be the eighth time we’ve gotten two-star. We feel that’s pretty good.”