Patent ID: 8721405

Claim:
A method of sorting animal portions comprising: providing a plurality of animal portions; determining a first desired characteristic of a cut of meat to be fabricated from the plurality of animal portions and a second desired characteristic of a cut of meat to be fabricated from the plurality of animal portions, the first characteristic and the second characteristic being other than a USDA measure of yield grade or quality grade; associating the desired first characteristic of the cut of meat to be fabricated from the plurality of animal portions with a first attribute of the plurality of animal portions; associating the desired second characteristic of the cut of meat to be fabricated from the plurality of animal portions with a second attribute of the plurality of animal portions that is different from the first attribute; ascertaining the first attribute of the plurality of animal portions; sorting the plurality of animal portions into at least a first sort group and a second sort group based on the ascertained first attribute of the plurality of animal portions and sorting the second sort group into at least two additional groups based on the second ascertained attribute, wherein like animal portions are grouped together for further processing as a batch of animal portions that enables fabrication of uniformly sized cuts from the animal portions; fabricating a plurality of cuts of meat from each of the animal portions of the batch of animal portions; and grouping uniformly sized cuts of meat fabricated from the batch of animal portions.