News Update

Pasture to plate cooperation needed to please consumers
March 16, 2007

A good eating experience for the consumer is the result of efforts across the entire beef industry.

“We need to control things from the pasture to the plate if we expect to maintain beef quality,” says Fred Owens, Oklahoma State University professor emeritus and research scientist. Owens, with experience at each link in the chain, spoke at a Feeding Quality Forum co-sponsored by Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB) last fall.

Starting with cow-calf producers, he outlines the needed focus. “Certainly the first step is sire selection and using EPDs (expected progeny differences),” Owens says. Emphasis should be placed on the Angus breed, calm disposition, polled cattle and smaller mature size for maintenance.

“Electronic identification (EID) of calves can help trace feedlot performance and carcass quality back to the cow, and such data should guide cow culling decisions,” he says. Weaning and creep-feeding will add value to the calves, along with castration at birth and vaccinations.

“Benefits from information transfer can be obtained most readily, and fed back to the cow-calf enterprise, when the producer retains ownership,” Owens says. The stocker operator can affect quality by buying only preconditioned, tame calves that have had appropriate vaccines and parasite controls.

“Then you need to maintain rate of gain with supplemental feed during drought or snow cover,” he says. For maximum beef quality, skip growth implants when backgrounding, he recommends.

Feedlots should select cattle the same way as stocker operators: “Then they should feed balanced, high-concentrate diets, adding ionophores and other compounds as appropriate,” Owens says, “and again, no implants for maximum beef quality.”

Sorting fed cattle to avoid excess fat cover and heavy carcasses is a must. “Feedyards should obtain and relate carcass data back to health and performance records. They also should relay both carcass and feedlot performance data back to the originating ranch or stocker operator,” Owens says.

Once the animal enters the packing plant, the road to quality beef does not stop. Owens says packing plants have a primary responsibility to control pathogens, but to encourage production of quality beef, they must share individual carcass data with cattle feeders and calf producers.

“Though information transfer is essential, that is the weakest component in the quality supply chain,” he says. Retailers are the last part of the process. Owens says they need to provide the proper cooking instructions, guarantee their products and provide good customer service to help maintain consumer demand.

While these production steps drive high-quality beef production and consumption, Owens notes, “certain practices that maximize production and efficiency conflict directly with practices that enhance meat quality.

“Currently, quality beef is skimmed from the top,” he adds, because most producers still see beef as a commodity, for lack of incentive. “All along the beef production chain, economic rewards dictate what specific management practices are used. The greater the premium for quality at each level, the greater the chance that producers will employ selection and production practices that will enhance beef quality — if they know about those practices.”

For further information on this topic, or to see comments from others related to quality beef production, see the Feeding Quality Forum proceedings at www.cabpartners.com/events/past_events/index.php.

— Release provided by Certified Angus Beef.