“In 1991, producers asked the association to look at the product after it left the ranch or feedlot for opportunities to improve quality,” said Dee Griffin, beef production management veterinarian at the Great Plains Veterinary Education Center in Clay Center.
In 1991, they found a problem with injection sites that no one knew existed, Griffin said. Some 24 percent of carcasses sustained losses at damaged injection sites but by 2001 that number had dropped to two percent, he said.
The biggest defect, though, is not hitting the target market, Griffin said. For example, if you’re in a feedlot trying to produce a choice steak, there will be a certain number of dollars you will lose if you produce a select rather than a choice carcass.
If on the other hand, you have a cull cow, but you keep her in good shape and she goes into a packing house that can utilize a lean cow – for stir fry, perhaps – that cow might have met the perfect target.
The quality assurance program has nothing to do with the government, Griffin said. Producers put this program together, in part, to make sure all cattlemen could meet the government regulations. So it’s an educational program. Part of that education is also to get information on how to do a better job.
Cattle are intercepted at the packing houses where auditors evaluate how they arrive, how they’re transported, humane treatment and other issues that consumers ask about, Griffin said. The National Cattlemens’ Beef Association designs a protocol and then opens that protocol for bids by the universities, which conduct the inspections. The cattlemen start with what they think they want to look at, but then they go further to address the concerns of their customers.
When people in the industry think of quality, they think of marbling, but it’s more than that. If your aim is produce a lean, select carcass for an all-natural market, that’s not choice but your customer didn’t want choice.
“Quality in this case means not just meeting, but going beyond the requirement to satisfy your customers,” Griffin said.
The Great Plains Veterinary Education Center is a specialized center within the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
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