Future of beef · Loss and waste
Meat loss and waste
Meat loss and waste is meat that leaves the food chain before it is eaten: the FAO counts loss up to retail, and waste in shops, restaurants and homes. Between a live steer and the plate, most of the animal's weight becomes hide, bone, organs, fat and trim. Separating unavoidable by-products from real loss requires weighing at each step.
At a glance
- Food lost after harvest
- About 14 % (FAO, 2019)
- Food wasted by retail and consumers
- About 19 % (UNEP, 2024)
- Carcass from live animal
- About 55–64 %
- Boneless retail cuts from carcass
- About 45–52 % (USDA yield grades)
- How it is measured
- Yield test: weigh in, weigh every output
Hide and bone are not lost
The FAO distinguishes food loss, which happens from production up to (but not including) retail, from food waste, which happens in retail, food service and households. For meat a third category matters as much as both: by-products. Hide, bone, blood, fat and offal are not steak, but they are not necessarily lost: they become leather, gelatine, rendered fat, pet food, fertiliser or, in many cuisines, food.
The headline figures are global and cover all foods. A 2011 FAO study estimated that roughly one third of food produced for human consumption, about 1.3 billion tonnes a year, was lost or wasted. The FAO's 2019 State of Food and Agriculture refined the loss part to about 14 % of food lost between harvest and retail. The UNEP Food Waste Index Report 2024 estimated 1.05 billion tonnes wasted in 2022, about 19 % of food available to consumers, with households responsible for around 60 % of it.
Meat is a small share of that tonnage but a large share of its environmental and economic cost, because each kilogram of beef carries the land, feed, water and emissions needed to raise the animal. A kilogram of steak thrown away wastes far more upstream resources than a kilogram of vegetables.
From the animal to the plate
The steps below are typical for grain- or grass-finished beef cattle; real figures vary with breed, fatness, the cutting specification and how much is sold bone-in.
| Step | What leaves | Typical yield of the step |
|---|---|---|
| Slaughter and dressing | Hide, head, feet, blood, digestive tract, offal | Carcass ≈ 55–64 % of live weight |
| Chilling | Water (shrink) | ≈ 1–2 % of carcass weight lost |
| Boning and trimming | Bone, excess fat, connective tissue, trim | Boneless closely trimmed retail cuts ≈ 45–52 % of carcass (USDA yield grades 1–5) |
| Aging (if dry-aged) | Evaporation, crust | ≈ 8–30 % of the aged piece, depending on days |
| Portioning in the kitchen | Trim, fat, tails, odd pieces | Varies widely by cut and specification |
| Cooking and the plate | Cooking loss, plate waste | Cooking loss ≈ 15–35 % of raw weight |
The real waste is downstream
Upstream, most of the weight that does not become meat is recovered as a by-product in industrial systems. The largest avoidable losses are downstream: trim and secondary cuts that are not used, meat that spoils in storage, over-portioning, and plate waste. In food service, the gap between what a primal could yield and what it actually yields is often invisible because the kitchen buys by the kilogram and sells by the portion, and nobody weighs what falls in between.
Two practices reduce it. Nose-to-tail cooking, popularised in English-speaking restaurants by Fergus Henderson's 1999 book of that name but traditional in most meat-eating cultures, uses offal, bones and secondary cuts instead of discarding them. Whole-muscle utilisation in the cutting room plans what every piece of trim becomes (burgers, stocks, sausages, rendered fat) before the primal is opened.
Weigh what comes in, and every output
- Weigh the piece as received, net of packaging and purge (the liquid in the bag).
- Cut it to the kitchen's specification.
- Weigh every output separately: portions, secondary cuts, usable trim, fat, bone and true waste.
- Check that the outputs add up to the input (within scale tolerance). A sheet where more comes out than went in has a recording error and should be excluded, not corrected.
- Compute portion yield (portions ÷ meat in) and usable yield (everything that will be sold or used ÷ meat in). The real cost of a usable kilogram is the purchase price divided by the usable yield.
- Repeat for many pieces. A single yield test can be misleading; the spread between pieces of the same cut is often wider than the difference between cuts.
A number per cut and per supplier
Measured yields turn waste from an abstract figure into a number per cut, per supplier and per butcher. They show which cuts lose most to trim, whether a supplier's pieces are consistently fattier, and how much an extra week of aging actually costs. Many cut articles in this reference include such field measurements, with the sample size and the kitchen's specification stated.
Frequently asked questions
How much of a cow becomes steak?
Typically the carcass is 55–64 % of live weight and boneless retail cuts are about 45–52 % of the carcass, so roughly a quarter to a third of live weight. Only part of that is steak; the rest is roasts, mince and other cuts.
What is the difference between food loss and food waste?
In FAO terms, loss happens from production up to retail; waste happens in retail, food service and households.
How do restaurants measure meat waste?
With yield tests: weighing each piece before cutting and every output after, then dividing portions and usable meat by the weight that came in.
Sources
6
- USDA Agricultural Marketing Service. United States Standards for Grades of Carcass Beef. 2017. www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/carcass-beef-grades-and-standards
- Toldrá, Fidel (ed.). Lawrie's Meat Science, 8th ed. Duxford: Woodhead, 2017.
- Gustavsson, Jenny; Cederberg, Christel; Sonesson, Ulf; van Otterdijk, Robert; Meybeck, Alexandre. Global Food Losses and Food Waste: Extent, Causes and Prevention. Rome: FAO, 2011.
- FAO. The State of Food and Agriculture 2019: Moving Forward on Food Loss and Waste Reduction. Rome, 2019.
- United Nations Environment Programme. Food Waste Index Report 2024. Nairobi, 2024.
- Henderson, Fergus. Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking. London: Macmillan, 1999.
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