KINGSVILLE (Oct. 2, 2026) — Texas A&M University-Kingsville’s (TAMUK) Meat Judging team teaches students more than meat quality; it provides multifaceted opportunities for their futures and careers and builds real-life skills applicable in many fields.
With the American Meat Science Association’s (AMSA) American Royal competition coming up on October 18 in Omaha, Nebraska, meat judging coach Zackery Rosenbaum — a TAMUK graduate student studying Animal Science with a focus on Meat Studies — has been preparing his team to look beyond just meat marbling and value. He has urged them to use competitions like this to help forge future career paths, regardless of their place in the competition.
“I try to teach them to be comfortable asking questions when they don’t know something,” Rosenbaum said. “It is a lot to learn, especially when you don’t have a background in this field. They’ll be learning a lot of new terms. Also, I try to teach them real-world skills like being punctual, professional, waking up early and networking with others. That’s how I got here.”
In preparation for the competition, the team has pushed through early morning practices, regular trips to local beef packers and more as Rosenbaum is not only setting up his students to do their best in meat grading but also get a closer look at related career fields.
“Starting this semester, leading up to the American Royal, we’ve been implementing 7 a.m. practices on Monday and Wednesday. Then we take trips to local beef packers, which is any place that processes beef. We'll go to the packing plant and work on real-life carcasses and get hands-on practice,” Rosenbaum said. “Whenever we practice during the week, we have an archive of meat judging classes and in-house tools. During the Spring, we get a lot of pork product that we can look at and have classes about, like our contests.”
The AMSA provides students with crucial educational opportunities, a major reason why the association lists a unique rule within its eligibility requirements.
For students to be eligible to compete in these competitions, they must not have competed in any official post-secondary competitions in similar areas or the same subject matter that they plan on competing in.
This allows more students to have the opportunity to experience what competitions like the AMSA American Royal have to offer.
“We want to reach as many students as we possibly can. So therefore, you have one year of eligibility,” Dr. Tanner Machado, chair of Animal Science and Veterinary Technology said. “So, if you go to the American Royal once, you cannot go again as a division. If there’s only one year of eligibility, we can train more students. If we had four years of eligibility, it would have less of an impact and provide fewer opportunities.”
For students interested in joining, you can be in any major and do not have to have a background in meat science. All the team is looking for is dedicated, hard-working and punctual students who are open to broadening their learning horizons.
For more information regarding joining TAMUK’s meat judging team, email Zackery Rosenbaum at zackery.rosenbaum@students.tamuk.edu or Dr. Tanner Machado at Tanner.Machado@tamuk.edu.