European conformation and fat scores are used to determine carcase value. Using MSA protocols 1775 French, Polish and Irish consumers evaluated 16 muscles from 203 carcasses for tenderness, juiciness, flavour liking and overall liking. These scores were then combined to generate a synthetic term MQ4. There was no relationship between MQ4 and conformation score. The relationship between fat score and MQ4 was only present for two muscles: +8.49 points in MQ4 for the tenderloin between fat score 1 and 3 and + 7.92 points for the outside between fat score 3 and 4. There was no difference between the MQ4 scores for carcasses with fat scores of 1, 2, 4, and 5. These results show there is no relationship between eating quality and conformation score and a possible positive trend between eating quality and fat score for only two muscles. European conformation and fat scores, initially set up to assess carcass quality, have no utility for predicting eating quality for the consumer as there is no clear relationship between these two kinds of assessments.