USDA meat grading continues to be a topic of great interest for many, and our link on USDA beef grading has been our most viewed webpage for many years. Davey Griffin, while cleaning out a folder in his desk, found these two documents about the history of meat grading, one written by L.B. Burk in November, 1944, and one by an unknown author who we think was Charles E. Murphey, who was a former USDA Agricultural Marketing Service official and who began and ended his career at Texas A&M University.
We hope that these documents will be of interest to those who wish to know more about the advent and early days of USDA grading.