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Simple Summary: Meat tenderness is crucial for eating quality, particularly in Australia, where it is a top palatability trait, with 50% consumer acceptance when shear force is below 42.6 N. Consumers are willing to pay a premium for guaranteed meat quality, making tenderness a priority for industry producers. Research has focused on the genetic and environmental factors affecting meat's biological, structural and physiological characteristics. Objective evaluation methods like shear force are commonly used but can be influenced by pH–temperature interactions. Our findings indicate that controlling pH–temperature decline during processing enhances tenderness. Additionally, genetics can impact the risk of cold shortening. Shear force is commonly used to evaluate tenderness, one of the most crucial eating quality aspects of sheep meat. The effect size of various factors on tenderness is still unknown. Studies have suggested that both genetic and environmental factors contribute to the variation in meat tenderness, and there are possible interactions between these factors. An extensive data set (n = 23,696) was analyzed to examine genetic and non-genetic influences on the shear force at 5 days postmortem (SF5). SF5 was measured on lamb loins (Longissimus lumborum) taken from lambs reared over 12 years at eight sites across Australia. The results showed that all carcass traits had a significant (p < 0.001) impact on SF5, with the largest effect on SF5 associated with intramuscular fat (IMF %) (f = 1035). There was also a significant effect of sex, cold shortening at 18 °C, sire type and cohort on SF5 (p < 0.001), with a large variation observed between the minimum cohort at 15.9 ± 1.5 N and maximum at 51.2 ± 2.1 N. In conclusion, a complex matrix of production, processing and genetic factors impact lamb tenderness as measured by shear force. This experiment helps identify the size of the contribution of these factors towards lamb tenderness, enabling the sheep industry to enhance consumers' satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]