News Update
June 18, 2008

Stika on Cattlenetwork.com

John Stika, president of Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB), was featured on Cattlenetwork.com Sunday. Click here to read the interview.

Thinking BIG About Beef 

Gene Gagliardi, president of Visionary Design/Smithfield Beef, not only thinks outside the box — he thinks off the plate and clean out of the kitchen at times. 

That’s not surprising, since his job is creating new food products. He’s intently interested in what and how consumers eat, especially when they’re out of the home. His mind always seems to be working in “better mousetrap” mode. 

Although he refers to himself simply as a “meat cutter,” Gagliardi is responsible for a number of highly successful food creations. He may be best known for inventing and producing the Steak-umm®, a thinly sliced beef sandwich. In 1980, it because the largest selling, frozen, raw branded meat product in the world, with sales hitting $63 million that year. He also designed Beef Value Cuts concepts, including the petite filet, flat iron and ranch steaks.

Gagliardi’s new spin on a bone-in plate rib, dubbed “The Texas Hold /Em” by his daughter, won the first Beef Innovation New Product Contest last March. The award is sponsored by the checkoff-funded Beef Innovations Group (BIG), which assists food creators and manufacturers in bringing new beef products to market. The award, presented at the spring 2008 Research Chef’s Association (RCA) annual meeting, carries a prize of $50,000 in advertising support to promote the new product.

The Texas Hold ‘Em is a beef short rib that has been frenched and scored to the bone so it can be a hand-held meal or sliced for tender pieces of beef.  It’s oven-cooked for about 20 minutes and finished on the grill so it “tastes just like steak,” Gagliardi said. “It’s your own personal little London Broil.”

For more information on beef checkoff-funded product development, visit www.beefboard.org or www.beefinnovationsgroup.org.

— Adapted from a CBB release.

Eradicate Scrapie PowerPoint Available Free from NIAA

Goat producers and individuals involved in the goat industries — livestock market owners, Extension personnel, show coordinators, processors, etc. — are urged to obtain a copy of “Goat Identification: Visual and Electronic,” a newly released slide presentation available from the National Institute of Animal Agriculture (NIAA). The CD is free, thanks to funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

You can obtain your free copy of the “Goat Identification: Visual and Electronic” slide set on CD by contacting the NIAA at 270-782-9798 or by visiting the NIAA website at www.animalagriculture.org and clicking on the “Issues” tab at the top of the home page where you will find “Eradicate Scrapie” link.

Cattlemen Urge Senate to Re-evaluate Renewable Fuels Policy

Persistently wet conditions and major flooding in the Midwest continues to paint a dark picture for fall grain harvest projections and intensifies pressure on feedgrain price and supply, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) reported last week.

“Cattlemen are now looking straight down the barrel of $7 corn, and that may just be the beginning,” said Gregg Doud, NCBA chief economist. “We already saw a lot of acres migrating away from corn this year, and that was before the wet spring pushed into June. By the time conditions improve in many of these fields, planting corn will no longer be an option.”

While many factors are contributing the tightening supplies and rising costs of feedgrains, Congressional mandates for production of grain-based fuels are adding to the market pressure, according to NCBA.

“USDA is now projecting a significant decline in per-acre yield for corn, on top of the reduction in corn acreage,” Doud says. “This puts a tremendous squeeze on all users of corn, but especially those who do not receive any tax credits or other subsidies to generate their end product.”

Several legislative proposals have been introduced to freeze or reduce ethanol production mandates, and to reduce or eliminate incentives that divert feedgrains toward ethanol production. Without endorsing any particular proposal, NCBA President Andy Groseta urged a Senate committee last week to carefully weigh current market conditions as they debate these issues.

“Cattle producers have always depended on the free market to drive their business, and as long as cattle producers have the ability to compete on a level playing field with the ethanol industry for each bushel of corn, the U.S. beef industry can and will remain competitive," Groseta said.

— Adapted from an NCBA release.

— compiled by Crystal Albers, associate editor, Angus Productions Inc.