News Update
August 27, 2010

American Angus Association Announces Credit Card Partnership

The American Angus Association and Angus Foundation have announced an important change in its credit card provider.

Since 1996, the Association has offered a credit card to its members, affiliates and others, with a percentage of purchases benefiting the Association’s not-for-profit entity the Angus Foundation — at no cost to the cardholder.

Now the Association proudly partners with a new card provider, Intrust Bank — a Wichita, Kan.-based institution that more closely aligns with American Angus Association ideals while providing competitive rates. Read more.

More Than a Thousand People Assemble in Fort Collins for Competition Workshop

More than a thousand people assembled in Fort Collins, Colo., today for a United States Department of Agriculture-Department of Justice (USDA-DOJ) workshop to examine competition in the livestock industry. The workshop is the fourth in a series of competition workshops being held around the country.

American Meat Institute (AMI) Senior Vice President of Regulatory Affairs and General Counsel Mark Dopp was slated to participate in an afternoon panel examining industry structure.  Workshop attendees were given lottery tickets that would be used to select randomly speakers for the public testimony portion of the workshop.

Livestock producers attended in full force wearing buttons to convey their positions ranging from “Pull the rule” to “Yeah USDA.”

In his opening remarks, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, “Producers are worried. They worry whether there is a future for them and their children in agriculture.” Vilsack went on to detail statistics about a shift away from the spot market.

“The thinning spot market is a concern because it sets the base marketing price in contracts,” Vilsack said. “Some have argued that the status quo is better. … Under status quo, there has been a significant exodus from agriculture and a depopulation of rural America.”

Attorney General Eric Holder said one of the purposes of the event was to examine “fairness and equal opportunity.”

“Too many farmers and ranchers are fighting tooth and nail simply to make a living,” he said.

As the event got under way, AMI’s Dopp issued a statement detailing the thorough examination that these issues have already had in courts and in economic studies.

“We are confident that the USDA-DOJ workshops will show what dozens of analyses by the government and universities have concluded repeatedly — that the U.S. meat and poultry industry is dynamic and competitive and that livestock and poultry procurement practices that include marketing agreements and forward contracts are legitimate,” Dopp said.

Dopp specifically expressed concerns about a new proposal from the Grain Inspection, Packers & Stockyard Administration (GIPSA) that would strongly discourage the use of alternative marketing agreements.

“Past attempts to prove through the courts that somehow agreements and forward contracts afford undue preferences have been rejected by eight appellate courts,” he added. “Despite these judicial rejections, USDA’s new proposal, which will strongly discourage the use of these agreements by exposing parties who enter into them to litigation, represents a plain-old end run around both the courts and Congress.”

To read AMI’s full statement, click here: www.meatami.com/ht/display/ReleaseDetails/i/62357.

— Releases by AMI.

New Round Cuts Offer Six More Value-Added Beef Options

The checkoff-funded Beef Innovations Group (BIG) debuted six new cuts this week from the beef round at the first Innovative Beef Symposium in Denver, part of its effort to help meat processors, manufacturers, retailers, foodservice operators and cattle producers maximize yield, add versatility and increase profitability.

“As the marketplace continues to evolve, it creates opportunities for new beef cuts to be used as a competitive advantage,” says Jim Ethridge, senior BIG director for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which contracts to manage new product development efforts for the Beef Checkoff Program. “Past work on the chuck subprimal had yielded benefits to all segments of the industry, and the muscles of the round offer the next frontier of innovation and additional value.”

As a team of meat scientists and industry professionals that work together to inspire beef innovation, BIG has considerable experience working with the value-added cuts from processing to end-use application. More than 80 representatives from meat processors, packers and food manufacturing companies convened to learn how to fabricate, merchandise, menu and profit from the new cuts at the symposium. Cutting guides and related marketing materials for the new round cuts will be available on http://www.beefinnovationsgroup.com by Sept. 30, 2010. 

The six new cuts include a portfolio of lean steak and roast options suitable for retail and foodservice outlets:

• Santa Fe Cut — similar to a flank steak, perfect for fajitas, stir fry or for shredded beef
  
• Round Petite Tender — flavorful, best cut into medallion steaks, offers a restaurant-quality experience on a bed of pasta or a roast for two
  
• San Antonio Steak — 1⁄2-inch lean steak, versatile and cooks fast, works well with a marinade
  
• Tucson Cut — the perfect lean cut for foodservice operations looking for value
  
• Braison Cut — ideal for any braising application and makes a great osso buco or pot roast
  
• Merlot Cut — deep red color, lean and flavorful, ideal for a variety of ethnic dishes

In 2007, BIG began its mission to explore this underutilized subprimal, which represents 30% of the beef carcass. Since then, a team of meat scientists have been working on locating whole-muscle cuts. This effort leverages the checkoff-funded Muscle Profiling Research, which aided BIG to uncover many successful cuts over the years known as the “Beef Value-Added Cuts,” a line of beef steaks and roasts that allow consumers to enjoy more great-tasting steaks and roasts that are easy to prepare and often moderately priced.

Several of these previously launched cuts have grown in popularity — such as the Petite Tender, Ranch Steak, Flat-Iron Steak and five cuts from the chuck roll — and are now being manufactured throughout the United States and sold through retail and foodservice outlets. Cattle-Fax estimates that BIG’s new product development initiatives have already resulted in an industry added-value of $50-$70 per head, or $1.4 billion in annual sales. New cuts from the chuck roll and the round are expected to increase this number significantly as they enter the mainstream marketplace. 

For more information about your beef checkoff investment, visit MyBeefCheckoff.com.

— Release by the Beef Checkoff Program.

AgriLabs Announces Award Winners

AgriLabs CEO, Steve Schram, presented winners of the AgriLabs Dr. Bruce Wren Continuing Education Awards at the combined annual meetings of the American Association of Bovine Practitioners (AABP) and Academy of Veterinary Consultants (AVC).

These annual awards honor Wren, a long-time AgriLabs technical services veterinarian, in recognition of his lifelong commitment to practical and formal continuing education for veterinarians.

The selection process was managed by a committee headed by Gatz Riddell, AABP, and David Selner, the National Dairy Shrine. The grants seek to encourage veterinarians working with beef or dairy cattle who have expressed a desire to expand their skills and knowledge to further develop within their field of expertise in veterinary practice.

“AgriLabs expects these awards to facilitate Dr. Wren’s efforts to encourage veterinarians to identify and participate in professional-development opportunities that enable them to be the best they can be within their profession and to better serve their clients and industry,” said Schram at a company meeting in Albuquerque.

Each $5,000 grant will be used by the winners — who have earned their veterinary degree within the past 10 years — to make possible the professional continuing education proposals they submitted. Proposals could focus on:

• Individual Animal Medicine — to enable practitioners to further his/her knowledge and skills in basic animal medicine, including diagnosis, treatment, surgery, case management, pain management or patient welfare.
  
• Production Medicine — for veterinarians seeking to developing or implement herd protocols that enhance health and profitability, including records analysis, disease prevention, production enhancement, benchmarking, biosecurity or food safety.
  

The recipients were Luke Schmid, Beef Continuing Education Award winner, and Conrad Spangler, Dairy Continuing Education Award. Schmid works with beef cattle at the Washington Veterinary Clinic, a mixed practice in Washington, Kan. Spangler works primarily with dairies at Circle H Headquarters, a large animal practice in Dalhart, Texas.

— Release by AgriLabs.

— Compiled by Mathew Elliott, assistant editor, Angus Productions Inc.