Assessment of cattle inter‐individual cluster variability: the potential of continuum data from the farm‐to‐fork for ultimate beef tenderness management

BACKGROUND This study implemented a holistic approach based on the farm‐to‐fork data at the four levels of the continuum (farm – slaughterhouse – muscle – meat) to study the inter‐individual cluster variability of beef tenderness. For that, 171 young bulls were selected on a large database of 480 animals according to the industrial expectations based on animal and carcass characteristics. The targeted factors were age at slaughter (14; 20 months), carcass weight (370; 470 kg), EUROP conformation (7; 15) and fatness (2.5; 5) scores of the carcasses. Multivariate analyses and unsupervised learning tools were performed. RESULTS Principal component analysis combined to agglomerative hierarchical clustering allowed ten clusters to be identified that differed (P