Background

The object of this project was to begin the process of the development of a more user-friendly version of the Beef Computer Assisted Retail Decision Support (CARDS) that could be distributed via the internet. The development of Beef CARDS requires an extended effort to complete the entire program and integrate it into other online resources for the Bovine Myology and Muscle Profiling web site. This is a summary of accomplishments of the preliminary work for the full development of the internet accessible CARDS program.

Results

The following list details the progress to-date which will be used in further completion of Beef CARDS for the Retail Cutting Test and Educational components.

1. Completion of spreadsheets which list Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications (IMPS) subprimals and general specifications to assist in organizing a flowchart. The spreadsheets list category areas and the cut or trim styles of subprimal origin for the breakdown of subprimals into retail cut and trim styles.
2. Completion of a spreadsheet which lists Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications (IMPS) subprimals and the major muscles located within that subprimal’s retail cut or trim style.
3. Completion of a flowchart to be used for the storage and retrieval of data for each Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications (IMPS) subprimal. This was accomplished by analyzing each specific subprimals’ retail cuts or trim styles into mutually exclusive categories to create the balance of a subprimal. The balance the flowchart presents then lists the possible combinations of retail cutting or trimming decisions for each subprimal. The analysis of categories for each subprimal will assist in the programming of the data and provide the user with every possible retail cutting decision variable.
4. Initial development of web site contents and a tentative template which includes Standardized Retail Cutting Tests and the Financial Retail Decision Tool.