Issues Management Efforts Pay Dividends Behind the Scenes, Beef Board Finds

NASHVILLE (January 29, 2003) – Checkoff-funded efforts to keep the industry on top of issues that could harm the business climate for beef are among the leading success stories for the checkoff program, the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board said here this week.  At the same time, the Board recognized the difficulty of quantifying issues-management programs designed to address those challenges the industry faces – or could face in the future.

On some occasions, issues management produces a more visible result. Worley pointed to the foreign animal disease scare in 2001 as an example.  During that scare, the issues management effort demonstrated its worth, as the public perception of the safety of U.S. beef actually increased during the course of the threat.

“Having an issues management capability for the beef industry is crucial,” according to Stephen Worley, chairman of the Joint Evaluation Advisory Committee that authored the evaluation report. “However, the area is more difficult than some others to evaluate.  When issues management is highly successful, a result may be that nothing bad happens.

According to John Roberts, a Vermont dairyman and chairman of the Joint Issues Management Subcommittee, an important value of the national program is its ability to provide assistance to state beef councils on local or regional issues.

“It’s a matter of service, as well as issue monitoring and management,” Roberts said. “When staff at a state beef council have an issue arise, they know they can call national checkoff staff for strategic counsel and response assistance right away.  National staffing for the program is provided on behalf of the Beef Board and state beef councils by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA). 

Issues management is about providing strategically and tactically useful information. The first step is information gathering. This is done through activities such as tracking activist groups and their social marketing agendas, monitoring scientific publications and conferences, tracking public policy initiatives and daily media monitoring. The IM program also conducts public opinion research to monitor consumer attitudes about key issues such as food safety and nutrition.

The second step is turning information into intelligence. Issues management provides intelligence through periodic issue analysis and trends analysis reports. It develops and emails issue advisories, often on a weekly basis. The issues management program also publishes the bi-monthly Issues Update publication to inform industry leaders and develops a wide range of issue fact sheets and issue response materials for use by national and state organizations.

The evaluation report from the Joint Evaluation Committee outlined several areas in which the issues management program hit the mark, including the fact that significant data was provided to support strategic decision-making in beef communications, including the tracking of more than 5,900 beef-related media stories that had the potential of reaching consumers more than 2.5 billion times.

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The Beef Checkoff Program was established as part of the 1985 Farm Bill. The checkoff assesses $1 per head on the sale of live domestic and imported cattle, in addition to a comparable assessment on imported beef and beef products. States retain up to 50 cents on the dollar and forward the other 50 cents per head to the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board, which oversees the national checkoff program, subject to USDA oversight. The checkoff assessment became mandatory when the program was approved by 79 percent of producers in a 1988 national referendum vote. Checkoff revenues may be used for promotion, education and research programs to improve the marketing climate for beef.

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