For Outdoor Grilling Most Americans cooked out on the grill over the Memorial Day weekend, and by far most of the backyard chefs cooked beef burgers or steaks. Three-fourths of those persons said they'd grill beef. Memorial Day is the top beef-eating day of the year, according to Dr. Chuck Lambert, staff economist with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. An estimated 64.2 million pounds of beef were consumed in the U.S. on Memorial Day. That compares to 51.4 million pounds on the average day.
Ground beef is the leading beef item served at home as well as in restaurants.
The vast majority of Americans remains confident that U.S. beef is safe. The survey was sponsored by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and was conducted by Wirthlin Worldwide, an independent research firm. The continued confidence in the safety of U.S. beef seems to reflect widespread awareness of actions by the beef industry and U.S. food safety officials to protect our cattle and beef from problems like BSE in British cattle. Also, there is overall awareness of industry and government programs to maintain meat safety. A possible link between BSE in cattle and CJD in humans remains speculative.