Here is an interesting post from a meat supplier and contest cook,about what we are seeing from our rib suppliers.
It just gets harder to buy from the mass marketers and achieve expected results.
Posted by bandit on May 24, 2003 at 21:56:46:
As some of you know I manage a meat market and we do our best to be a cooker friendly supplier to the competition bbq set. As an occasional competition cooker myself I have a pretty good handle on what cooks are looking for. About a year ago I started noticing that the backribs we were getting had less and less meat and more and more shiners. For the last year I have been getting the runaround from packers about why their ribs were no longer as meaty and pulling my hair out trying to find ones that were. In the last week I have spoken to representatives from both PSF and Seaboard farms and have come up with an explanation. Both stated that back ribs are looked at as a BY-PRODUCT of boneless loin production, not as a priimary product. The majority of their boneless loin production is for the export (japanese) market and they have found that by leaving the membrane and corresponding meat that attaches the loin to the back rib attached to the LOIN AS OPPOSED TO THE RIB the loins travel better and loses less weight due to purge. This means that as long as the packers are concentrating on the export market and not the domestic market we will not have the quality backribs that we were used to getting. I thought it was refreshing that someone finally admitted that the specs had changed, but a bit dissapointing that rib quality is not a priority. I, like the rest of you will keep searching for a good supply, but I felt this was something that might interest the forum readers.
Bandit
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