Penn State Extension
Understanding Beef Carcass Yields and Losses During Processing
What this source is
- Authority
- Academic
- Territories
- US
- Primacy
- secondary
- Commercial interest
- none
- Retrieved
- 2026-08-13
- State
- Read and citable
By Jonathan A. Campbell, PhD, former meat extension specialist. Establishes the US primal structure — chuck 29%, round 22%, loin 16%, rib 9%, together over 75% of the carcass, with shank, brisket, plate and flank making up the rest. Deliberately thin on individual retail cuts, and registered as what it is: a structural source, not a cut chart. The cut chart BBQHQ actually wanted is blocked; see below.
What it may be cited for
Terminology, Technical
- Explicitly not safety: A yield factsheet is not a food-safety source.
What we recorded from it
Penn State Extension states that the four main beef primals are chuck (29% of carcass), round (22%), loin (16%) and rib (9%), together over 75% of carcass weight, with shank, brisket, plate and flank making up the remainder.
- Where it applies:
- United States.
- A structural account. The source explicitly does not break each primal down into retail cuts, and BBQHQ does not extrapolate one.
Claims resting on it
- US beef butchery divides the carcass into chuck, rib, loin, round, shank, brisket, plate and flank, of which chuck, round, loin and rib together are over three quarters of carcass weight.
If this source changes, these are the claims that need rechecking. That is the point of recording provenance per claim rather than per page.