Meat of male animals is commercially more valuable than female animals, because females kept for reproduction and normally slaughtered in older age, when the length and rigidity of muscle fibers is increased and the level of collagen is higher resulting in tougher meat and lower quality therefore lower commercial value. Many meatpacking sells cow's meat as male meat, causing damage to various meat producing sectors and consumers. The objective of this study is to develop a technique that would permit the sexing of boned, packaged and chilled, ready for sale beef. Principle of this technique is the same as used for sexing preimplanted cattle embryos, and depends on the fact that males and females can be differentiated by amplification of a male-specific region of chromosome Y using PCR. The amplified male-specific DNA region was a 307 bp fragment from the BRY1 region. Genomic DNA was extracted by the Guanidinium-thiucianat method. DNA was quantified in a spectrophotometer at 260nm and its integrity was determined on 1.8% agarose gel. We analyzed 30 samples identified as belonging to males, 9 of which (30%) presented a discordant result, i.e., they actually belonged to females. This method was a cheap and very efficient for determination of cattle sex from the carcass. It is technically simple and rapid, permitting its utilization in the prevention of fraud in the commercialization of beef.

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