Whether it's changes in what buyers want or how cattle get to market or legislated regulation, this program keeps producers on the industry's leading edge.

The MFA Health Track Beef Alliance program started out as a pre-conditioning guideline to improve the bottom line of its participants. There have been many such programs through the years with varying degrees of success, but Health Track has grown into the premier value-added, pre-conditioning program. MFA Health Track recently enrolled it's 100,000th calf since September of 2000, easily making it one of the largest programs of its kind. MFA Health Track has evolved into a complex and technologically advanced tool for producers to increase profit and stay prepared for the constant changes facing the beef industry.

Producers who have enrolled their calves in the Health Track program have benefited from cost-effective weight gain and a movement of their marketing window from one of traditional discounts periods-caused by too much supply-to a marketing period that better meets the needs of the next segment and represents a higher net return per head. When you add the typical Health Track premiums to that equation, the added value keeps going up. The nearby graph shows this relationship clearly. The horizontal axis is made up of the weeks of the year, (week 1 is the first week of January); the vertical axis represents net profit or return per head. The red line at $45 is the average feed cost per head to participate in the Health Track program for the calves to gain 100 pounds. The solid fluctuating line represents the difference in profit per head between selling a 650-pound steer the current week and a 550-pound steer 8 weeks earlier based on historical Missouri Weekly Weighted Average prices. In other words, it shows the extra dollars per head available to pre-conditioning over selling bawling calves.

Notice there are times when the advantage drops below the red line. This would represent times of the year when pre-conditioning traditionally hasn't paid. It is caused by non-traditional marketing in a high demand/low supply period.

An example would be 550-pound steers the first week of March. Keep in mind that the line is created using USDA reported prices, not Health Track prices.

Now look for the 7 individual squares, always located above both of the other lines. These represent net return per head for 650-pound steers at Health Track auction sales throughout the state. These are sales in which we were able to capture actual prices on all of the cattle sold.

It is important to notice that not only is the net return per head significantly higher than the average cost of pre-conditioning, but also significantly higher than historical returns per head for non-Health Track calves.

Source and process verification are the cornerstones added value is built upon. Buyers have always appreciated the value of known-source cattle and the health benefits of properly vaccinated calves. They also fully understand the benefit of a standardized, high quality nutrition requirement (one that most other programs leave out) and how important it is for calves to be weaned at least 45 days before being commingled with other calves.

Now buyers have other reasons to seek source-verified calves; reasons that we never thought of when we were designing the Health Track program. Country of Origin Labeling, National ID and the Japanese export issue are all driving changes in procurement techniques. Regardless of how you feel about these issues, changes in our beef system will occur and they will require producers to comply with the requirements are created to follow any new laws.

The Health Track program was not created to help producers comply with source verification laws. However, we will make absolutely certain that participating in Health Track meets whatever requirements the final version of these laws put forward. We are very confident that our current participants can comply with all of the proposed rules and we intend to keep it that way. Our retail coverage in our market area and our direct professional relationship with our member/owners puts Health Track in a place by itself in this regard. We hope the rules aren't costly or restrictive, but we will be ready.