 "Photo: Karl Anderson")
As vibrations of my cell phone became louder, my heart sank.
It was 7 a.m. Saturday, and time for me to head to the Gordon W. Davis Meat Science Laboratory to learn what exactly the students on the Texas Tech Meat Judging Team do.
They, on the other hand, had been at the science lab since 4 a.m., and must have been wide-awake by then.
To me, it seemed unnatural to arise before the sun on a Saturday morning. It was dark outside, and Lubbock still wore its frosty exterior.
“Its just part of the package,” said Collin Corbin, who has been a member of the Tech Meat Judging Team for one year. “Yeah, we’d like to sleep in, but we know it’s helping us get better. It’s something we have to live with.”
And for that, I admire Corbin, a junior animal science from Webster, and his fellow teammates.
Mark Miller, a Tech professor and San Antonio Livestock Show Distinguished Chair in Meat Science, told me the team members are required to commit 80 hours a week to the science lab during judging season — August through March. Every Saturday their class time begins at 4 a.m., and on the weekdays at 5 a.m.
Their dedication was evident when I walked into the science lab that morning; the classroom they were gathered in was silent, and each was bent over a sheet of paper, writing furiously.
The long hours and concentration put in by the students made it possible for the Tech Meat Judging Team to secure seven national championships and four second-place honors in the past 20 years.
I made sure to lower my voice as I asked Miller whether I should take off my thick jacket.
“Oh, no. You’ll need that,” he said with a smile.
I attempted to smile in return, but I am afraid it might have come off as more of a grimace; I hadn’t warmed up yet from the icy drive from my apartment.
A large metallic-colored door stood at the front of the classroom, and as he slid it open, vapor seeped through its frame. I pulled my white lab coat tight around me.
We entered what appeared to be a maze of coolers, each containing an assortment of carcasses and cuts of meat.
In the first room we stopped at, four pigs hung with numbers tagged on their feet. They were cut in half, which enabled students to observe the animal’s trimness and muscle quality.
After explaining how to tell how much trim is too much by examining the layer of fat on the animal’s back, Miller asked me to rank the pigs from highest to lowest according to muscle and trim ratio.
This is something the members of the meat judging team must be efficient at, and I found it more difficult than I first assumed because at first glance, the trim layers looked incredibly similar.
He then turned around to face the room’s opposite wall where four lambs hung. I temporarily zoned out while staring at the stubs for heads they were left with.
Lambs are judged differently, where the better carcass should appear to have an hourglass shape.
“You want it to be narrow in the middle and wider at the top and bottom,” Miller said.
The next room we entered was much bigger, containing tables holding different cuts of meat. Each table held cuts from a different animal, and Miller explained what parts would be used for what kinds of food. He also emphasized the importance of trimming related to shipping cuts to companies.
“When you ship a cut of meat off, you can only send (a certain number) of pounds,” he said, “which is why it is important to trim off the extra fat and remove bones to reduce shipping weight. It costs you and the other company more money.”
From there, we moved onto an even larger room where smaller cuts of meat lay on tables, including one displaying four different hams.
Out of the four, one was noticeably paler than the rest.
“Can you see the difference?” He asked me. “(It’s PSE pork) which means pale soft and exudative. It means it’s very low quality and not very tasty. PSE is a genetic problem or caused by stress prior to harvest.”
Judges have to look out for this defect when examining meat.
After giving me a tour of the room and showing me boxes of already packaged cuts, he led me to our final destination: the cow room.
It wasn’t really called the cow room, but as soon as I crossed its threshold, he pulled a massive steer carcass in our direction. It must have been about six feet in length.
He pointed out the steer’s trimness among other things, and that was the end of my tour.
Other than being extremely interesting, the experience showed me just how much members of the judging team have to know. Their knowledge must go beyond anatomical memorization, and Miller said the department’s goal is to teach them more than meat judging skills.
“The meat judging team is more than just learning how to evaluate meat and learning how to win a contest,” Miller said. “The purpose of what we do is to teach people life skills they can use wherever they go. To teach them to strive for honor and pursuing excellence in making decisions and having a really good work ethic.”
Whatever Miller’s ultimate teaching goal is, his effectiveness is evident in the team’s numerous successes.
I left that morning with a deeper appreciation for the judging team’s accomplishments, and wondered where I could get a good steak for lunch.
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