AgWired

The first ever winners of the BQA Award were announced today.

Quality. It’s not only a word written in an instruction manual but a responsible action – one must live it and then teach it. That was the underlying theme this week as two producers were honored with the national Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) award, created to recognize outstanding beef and dairy producers from across the country who incorporate BQA principles as part of the day-to-day activities on their operations. The winners were selected based upon their commitment to beef quality assurance while operating sustainable cattle operations.

A common trait among the two winners is a strong desire to continually improve BQA on their operations while successfully encouraging others around them to implement BQA. The National BQA award winners are selected annually by a committee of representatives from universities, state beef councils and cattle industry groups. For more information about the beef checkoff or BQA program, visit www.bqa.org, www.dbqa.org or www.beefboard.org.

Listen to my interview with Jim and Anne here: cisc-08-bqa.mp3

Cattle Industry Summer Conference Photo Album

In a real show of gratitude, we allowed Joe Schuele, USMEF, to attend the media reception here at the Cattle Industry Summer Conference. We even let him say a few words. We did it because we appreciate all his hard work in the media room for years.

Joe let us know how much he enjoyed doing it and said that we’d be taken care of very well by Grace Webb and Melissa Tessitore, pictured here with him.

We know where to find Joe though.

Tom Ramey, CBB’s CEO sure has his hands full dealing with some challenging times for the Checkoff. This morning he made a presentation at the second general session of the Summer Conference. You can listen to his presentation below.

I also interviewed Tom and found out that there are two main issues of special importance to the Checkoff here at this conference. The first one, according to Tom, is the budget. The recommended budget was presented at the CBB Update Session and committees will be looking at the parts that affect them during their meetings. Tom says that Checkoff dollars are down and that it’s a tough time right now. He says some difficult decisions will need to be made.

The other big issue is the process to create recommendations for ways to improve the Checkoff. Tom says the staff has sent out over 300 letters soliciting comments and that they’ll be organizing meetings with a number of the organizations targeted. Once those comments come in the staff will organize them and scrub them so that the Admin Subcommittee, which is charged with overseeing this process, can look at them on the merit of the comment without being affected by seeing who wrote them. Then the staff will be helping organize meetings with the committee to review the comments and formulate recommendations prior to the end of the year.

Tom says producers here seem excited about what the Checkoff is doing but are concerned about the budget. He says these are difficult times for the beef industry.

Listen to my interview with Tom here: cisc-08-ramey-1.mp3

Listen to Tom’s general session presentation here: cisc-08-ramey-general-session-2.mp3

Cattle Industry Summer Conference Photo Album