2001 News Archive
Producers Tackle Many Aspects of Quality through Beef Quality Assurance Program -- October 1, 2001
DENVER, Colo. (September 28, 2001) -- Quality means different things to different people. To U.S. cattle producers, it means raising animals in ways that will improve consistency and competitiveness in an increasingly challenging market.
Through a Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) program, producers have banded together to set standards and establish practices that can best accomplish that goal. The program is funded through the beef checkoff, a producer-controlled research, information and promotion effort that`s administered by the Cattlemen`s Beef Board. The checkoff is now in its 15th year.
Coordinated by the National Cattlemen`s Beef Association (NCBA) and implemented by state cattlemen`s groups, extension specialists, veterinarians and allied industry groups, the BQA program has for years used checkoff dollars to target beef, veal and dairy producers, along with veterinarians, with informational programs to ensure safe, wholesome beef and veal. In the late 1980’s only a handful of states had begun quality assurance programs. Today the quality assurance network reaches producers in all 50 states.
"The message was obvious: there were major questions among beef consumers concerning the quality and safety of the beef and veal we were producing,” said Mike Bowles, a beef producer from Salado, Texas, and past chairman of the industry`s Quality Assurance Subcommittee. "Cattle and beef producers and the allied industries couldn’t get by without heeding the warning signs that faced the industry. We had to answer with action and improvements in our production practices that eliminated the industry’s quality problems.”
State programs and the producers who run them are the critical link in the BQA network, and one of the key elements of its success. Meetings between state BQA coordinators are conducted yearly to make sure targets are appropriate and being met.
An Evolving Program
When the BQA program was first conceived from the Beef Safety Assurance Task Force Report in 1987, the primary focus was to enhance the image of beef as a safe and wholesome food. The initial effort was particularly targeted toward residue
prevention. Today, thanks in part to educational efforts of the BQA program, the drug residue violations for fed slaughter steers and heifers are almost non-existent.
From the start, the BQA program has been constantly evolving through the years to include other issues of critical importance to the overall quality, safety and competitiveness of beef cattle.
Measuring Quality
The road to improving beef quality has been paved with several audits that assess quality defects and identify areas for improvement. The audits began with the 1991 National Beef Quality audit that announced the beef industry leaves $200 per head on the table for every slaughter steer/heifer it harvests because of correctable quality defects.
Since that first audit, statistics show that producers have had tremendous success through their quality assurance efforts. In fact, the most recent benchmark for fed beef quality, the National Beef Quality Audit - 2000, showed that over the past 10 years U.S. cattle producers have increased the quality of their animals, resulting in better products reaching the marketplace. The audit revealed, for instance, that there was a 2.5 percent incidence of injection site damage to the sirloin -- down from as much as 23 percent in a the 1991 survey.
"Everyone in every segment of the industry should be pleased with our progress," said Bowles. “The nearly complete elimination of injection site tissue damage in carcasses is due in large part to checkoff-funded efforts.
“With new animal health products to improve beef quality and the use of quality management programs through state associations, beef producers continue daily efforts to maintain and improve quality production practices,” Bowles said. “This has been accomplished with seed money from the beef checkoff.”
Among other findings of the 2000 Audit were:
· Choice and Prime carcasses rose to 51 percent -- a 3 percent rise since 1995;
· While there was a minimal increase in fat thickness since 1995, the thickness was still significantly below what it was in 1991, showing that the industry is improving quality without increasing external fat;
· The percentage of lower-value B-maturity carcasses dropped almost 2 percent since 1995, to 2.5 percent of carcasses evaluated.
Everyone in the Industry
The advances made through Beef Quality Assurance aren`t limited to those who raise their animals strictly for beef, though. Everyone -- from ranchers to feeders, dairymen and those who raise veal calves -- has a responsibility to maximize the safety and quality of the beef and veal they produce.
"Our efforts not only show how we as an industry are doing, but they show what we have yet to do," said Bob Kerschen, DVM, current chairman of the Quality Assurance Subcommittee. "The priorities and goals we establish through the BQA program give producers improvements to shoot for in our never-ending drive to maximize quality of U.S. beef."
Producers themselves are at the heart of the BQA program, Kerschen said. Through the BQA subcommittee, producers determine what the needs are and how they can best be reached. Furthermore, the program is funded by producers through their $1-per-head beef checkoff.
The Cattlemen`s Beef Board`s 110-member board is appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture to oversee the collection of the checkoff, certify state beef councils, implement the provisions of the federal order establishing the checkoff and evaluate the effectiveness of checkoff programs.
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Producer-directed and consumer-focused, the National Cattlemen`s Beef Association is the trade association of America’s cattle farmers and ranchers, and the marketing organization for the largest segment of the nation’s food and fiber industry