Topics

The Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) program has developed best management practices to ensure cattle are healthy and productive while providing safe, wholesome products for consumers. BQA standards encompass most segments of the beef industry, including cow-calf, feedyard and marketing.

Agriculture is an industry that is known to be dangerous; this fact is especially true for workers on cattle feedlots.

According to recent labor statistics, beef cattle production has a fatality rate of 116 per 100,000 workers.

Several years ago, I ran into a much younger friend of mine at a winter trade show and asked him what he’d been up to. “We just got back from skiing,” he said. When I asked where he went, he replied in a nonchalant manner, “The Alps.”

Traceability is coming. It’s an inevitability – but also an exciting change for the industry. However, it’s a daunting and ambiguous subject when you think about it.

“Wow, I finally understand the problem a few persistently infected (PI) calves can have on my cattle. More than 60 percent of the cattle in all my pens and pastures were exposed to BVD because 30 percent of the loads I received had one or more BVD-PI calves on them.” This is a typical statement a cattleman makes after experiencing a BVD-PI herd health problem.

The beef world seems to love acronyms and initialism. ADG, BCS, RFI, RTS, A.I., ET … the list goes on and on. One set of letters I wish we talked more about is ROI: return on investment.