NCBA MEMBERS APPROVE NEW POLICY, BUDGET AT CONFERENCE

DENVER (July 20, 1998) – Cattle producers at their summer conference here approved new programs and policy that will guide the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) as it implements marketing, quality, communications and policy initiatives. The NCBA Board of Directors approved a checkoff and dues division budget of $55.9 million and $8.19 million, respectively. The total budget for NCBA is $64.1 million

Live Cattle Marketing: NCBA adopted priorities for the current voluntary price reporting system: develop a grid pricing system with a negotiated base price; complete voluntary reporting; and more objective measurements for defining cattle value. If these priorities are not achieved by 2000, NCBA will work through the legislative process to implement a mandatory price reporting system. NCBA policy mandates immediate mandatory volume and price reporting be achieved for boxed beef, beef imports and beef exports.

Tax and Credit: NCBA supports the concept of a national consumption tax plan as long as it emphasizes the complete elimination of the current tax code.

Beef Safety: NCBA supports research to identify critical control points in production systems that have the potential to reduce food-borne pathogens and preventative management interventions that may reduce the prevalence of food-borne pathogens. These controls and/or interventions should make statistical, meaningful reductions of food-borne pathogens in a cost-effective manner.

Cattle Health and Well-being: NCBA continues to support the eradication of brucellosis from the bison and elk populations in the Greater Yellowstone Area, with eradication to be complete by 2005. NCBA also supports legislation that would include a requirement that range management practices in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks be consistent with other federal land use programs and utilize realistic migratory animal control on public lands adjacent to the national parks, that would ensure any movement of bison or elk within or out of the Greater Yellowstone Area will not affect marketability of any state's domestic livestock nationally or internationally, and that would require the Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service and other agencies to coordinate and cooperate with state animal health officials in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

Science and Technology: NCBA encourages USDA Agriculture Research Service, Wildlife Service, University and other researchers to do needed disease surveillance and research on wildlife and exotic game animals to protect the cattle population. NCBA encourages USDA and others to continue to fund Chronic Wasting Disease research and to increase funding to provide for adequate laboratory and database facilities. Since animal diseases occur periodically in some states and occur in wildlife in some states, NCBA supports research to develop protocols and determine the economic impact of an internal regionalization of states or area.

Initiated in 1898, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association is the marketing organization and trade association for America’s one million cattle farmers and ranchers. With offices in Denver, Chicago and Washington D.C., NCBA is a consumer-focused, producer-directed organization representing the largest segment of the nation’s food and fiber industry.

(Editor’s Note: A separate release on the price reporting issue is also available at www.beef.org)

– NCBA –