Stay ahead of the game in today's beef industry by recognizing trends and participating in real value-added opportunities. Consumer preferences are changing the industry. Consistency rules--and pays dividends.

Make no mistake about it--the consumer is driving the U.S. beef industry. And what consumers want is changing the way calves are managed on the farm, through the marketing system, in the feedyard and at the packing plant.

Different times demand different calves. That's a point speakers at the 2001 MFA Beef Innovator seminars made loud and clear.

Your ultimate customer--the consumer--expects devotion to the quality and safety of the product he or she consumes, said Dr. Gary C. Smith, of the Center for Red Meat Safety at Colorado State University. And it's up to everyone in the beef industry to provide certain assurances.

"The guarantee that must be provided to both U.S. and international consumers of your beef should assure that those consumers receive bacteriologically and chemically safe, convenient, nutritious, healthful, attractive and consistently palatable beef," Smith said. "And they want to know that beef was produced without compromising the environment or the animal's welfare."

Your customers also want beef that is "consumer friendly," Smith added. He checked off several programs that relate to beef convenience, safety and healthfulness: the "EZ to use; EZ to choose" campaign, the "Beef Made Easy" labeling program and the "Beef is a Healthy Food" campaign, as well as several new product development efforts.

More and more, consumers want to know where and how their beef is being produced, Smith said. They want assurance that producers are good stewards of the environment, soil and water. And several major beef retailers--including McDonald's, Wendy's, Kroger and Wal-Mart--require that beef production be as humane as possible, without compromising the animal's welfare. All that makes source verification--traceability--important, and puts more stress on the verification of production practices and processes.

New technologies will increase the precision of producers who are ready to adopt them. EPDs (expected progeny differences) for carcass traits and grid-marketing compliance will take some of the guesswork out of matings.

Instrument grading for cutability as well as for quality and palatability is coming on quickly, as is the practice of sorting feeder cattle into "outcome" groups. Down the road, genome mapping, sexed semen and even cloning will allow even more precise selection, breeding and production of the kind and quality of cattle that will meet consumer demand.

Smith got a nod of agreement from James Herring, president and CEO of Friona Industries, Amarillo, Texas. With five commercial feedyards in Texas and an on-feed capacity of nearly a quarter of a million head, Friona Industries is the nation's seventh largest cattle feeder.

"The public loves our product, but they would value it even more if beef were more consistent, more cost-efficient, more tender and more convenient," said Herring. "We have the tools in place to do all of that."

Last January, Herring was awarded the 2001 "Vision Award" as beef innovator of the year by the National Cattlemen's Foundation. Friona Industries was an early participant in the Texas Ranch-to-Rail research project, which led to the development of the VAC-45 conditioning program (where calves are properly vaccinated against respiratory and clostridial diseases and weaned at least 45 days before being sold).

Based on experience gained with the VAC-45 program, in 1994, Friona began Producer's Edge, the first widescale program to later pay premiums for weaned and preconditioned feeder calves. Later, Herring helped establish the Beef Advantage Project, a program designed to show that, when given the proper guidelines, calf producers can provide raw material so consistent that it can become a branded product line.

"The ultimate goal of the Beef Advantage Project is to develop an efficient cattle production system to deliver to the consumer a beef supply that meets their highest expectations for safety, taste and tenderness," said Herring. "As a starting place, VAC-45 is a must. So are source and process verification, along with permanent identification and traceback."

Alliances and joint ventures among cattle feeders, packers and retailers are moving more branded, case-ready beef all the time. Beef Advantage Project is involved in such a venture with Friona Industries, Excel Corporation and Kroger food stores. Carcass criteria for such brand equity marketing are:

To demonstrate the advantage of healthy versus sick steers, Herring pulled up 2000-2001 statistics from the Texas Ranch-to-Rail program:

Quality grade

"At the calf producer level, the value of proper preconditioning cannot be overstated," said Herring. "It means reduced costs at the feedyard and premiums for higher carcass value. It means less death loss and fewer sick cattle. And it contributes to predictable performance."

Preconditioning is necessary to meet the requirements for most alliance programs.

"Preconditioned cattle are the preference," said Herring. "Premiums and discounts for carcass characteristics are more defined now. When we figure our breakeven projections, we have increased the number of variables we look at."

For a variety of reasons, producers often leave a lot of money on the table when they market their calves, said Mike John, manager of MFA's Health Track Beef Alliance:

• They sell at the wrong time of year.
• They don't sell as many pounds as they should.
• Their cattle just don't have "buyer appeal."
• They don't add value to their cattle.

"The new opportunities in the beef industry will come from cooperation, not confrontation," John said. "With the Health Track Alliance, we want to add value not just for calf producers but for everyone else in the industry.

"We're doing some new things this year that will help the process," he added. "For one, we're doing BioSort where we can. This is a video-driven scanning device that gives us a quick, accurate picture of the animal and what the animal contains. It's a way to speed up the animal sorting process that is more consistent and faster than some sorting systems.

"By sorting animals into larger lots of more uniform cattle, we add value," John continued. "This is a way to help the small-sized producer sell on even footing with larger producers. And we'll be using combination visual and EID [electronic identification] tags again this year. We have a lot more to gain than to lose by having the ability to trace cattle back through the system.

"We use EID primarily because it increases the integrity and reliability of our animals," said John. "Ready or not, the industry will have a mandatory national animal ID system. We want to stay ahead of the game."