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By Tim Sprinkle
Nov 20, 2025
As the National Livestock and Meat Board has touted in its advertisements since the early 1990s: “Beef. It's What’s for Dinner.”
That certainly holds true in the U.S., where according to Statista, the average person eats more than 59 pounds of beef annually, and 86% of the population consumes meat as part of their diet. Given this level of demand, it’s no surprise that meat production is on the rise, reaching more than 350 million metric tons worldwide as of 2023, according to the United Nations. The U.S. alone produces some 107 billion pounds of red meat and poultry combined every year.
Production levels like these are only possible through the use of technology to support the work of human meatpackers, inspectors, and others in the industry. Enter the committee on livestock, meat, and poultry evaluation systems (F10), which focuses on standards for electronic evaluation devices used in the livestock and meat industries. These devices analyze both live animals and carcasses, though most of their work today is focused on carcass evaluation.
The committee’s beginnings can be traced to the hog industry, where early electronic carcass evaluation systems — using technologies from electromechanical tools to infrared imaging — were used to assign lean percentages and other grades. As these devices became part of commercial transactions and packers began paying premiums for higher-quality animals, the need for standardization became clear to ensure fairness, consistency, and accurate grading across different technologies and manufacturers.
“Back in the day, everything was visually looked at by a human,” says Bryice Wilke, committee chair. “Then, with technology coming onboard, we saw a real need to have some type of standardization. We didn’t want one instrument coming up with a different grade than another for the same carcass. It’s like a scale. If you put 50 pounds on it, it should read 50 pounds. These standards make sure a producer, and anyone impacted, is treated equally.”
The committee as a whole represents a unique space where industry, government, science, and technology intersect to build standards that are trusted, enforceable, and beneficial across the entire meat supply chain.
“What's neat about the F10 committee is that it's not just made up of one sector of the livestock and meat industries,” Wilke says. “We have livestock producers, feedlot owners, academic meat scientists, equipment manufacturers, meat packers, retail, and the USDA all at the table. I think that is unique and much needed. Everyone comes together to write these standards.”
As he explains, universities and meat scientists often develop and test evaluation devices, while manufacturers supply them to packers, who rely on ASTM standards to ensure compliance with USDA and other government regulations. Given this wide range of stakeholders, many of F10’s standards have broad impact across the industry, up to and including how meat is marketed and sold to end consumers. Among the most impactful standards are:
1) Specification for tenderness marketing claims associated with meat cuts derived from beef (F2925): A meat tenderness standard that was created to help supermarkets and retailers better label beef cuts (e.g., “certified tender” or “certified very tender”) as an extension of the traditional USDA grades like Prime, Choice, and Select. It covers the requirements needed for sellers to incorporate a tenderness marketing claim to finished labeling, advertisements, or promotions, and adds the requirement that any beef cuts considered for a tenderness claim must be certified through a third-party audit.
2) Specification for design and construction of composition or quality constituent measuring devices or systems (F2342): For manufacturers and those involved in the design and development of new meat evaluation systems, this standard covers what is required of that type of hardware, including specifications around units of measure, operating temperature, tolerance to environmental disturbances, error messages, and reference materials. As Wilkie mentions, this is all with an eye toward ensuring the evaluation systems that are being used in the industry perform equally in all settings to ensure a level playing field.
3) Test Method for livestock, meat, and poultry evaluation devices (F2343): This standard outlines a test method that manufacturers, packers, and regulators can use to determine if the results they are getting from a given meat evaluation device are accurate. Accuracy is important in the meatpacking industry, as the characteristics of livestock, meat, and poultry that are being measured are used to determine value. If the hardware fails this test, the user knows their results may be skewed and adjustments might be necessary.
4) Standard practice for user requirements for livestock, meat, and poultry evaluation devices or systems (F2341): Having access to an evaluation device is one thing, but how can you be sure it is being used correctly? After all, mistakes made in the use of these systems might affect the reliability of the data they collect. That’s why F2341 outlines meat evaluation system user requirements around installation, operator training, operation, verification, inspection, maintenance, and data retention, to ensure no mistakes are made in regular operation.
When it comes to the meatpacking industry, the standards maintained by committee F10 are just one part of the process of creating consistent requirements. Together with the National Council on Weights and Measures’ Handbook 44 and the regulatory framework created by the USDA’s Packers and Stockyards Division, these standards have become de facto requirements for the industry to follow. Beginning with broad industry collaboration, they shape day-to-day practices in meatpacking and support consistent, fair, and enforceable rules.
“ASTM’s standards are all impactful,” Wilke says, due to this enforcement structure. “If a packer is buying an evaluation device, they want to make sure it meets these standards or else they'll be in violation of Packers and Stockyards regulations. That’s a unique space for ASTM in the industry.”
