Regular readers know I’m a pretty big food fan and especially of beef. After seeing the Beef Backer Award winners presented with their awards this morning I’m looking forward to my next trip to Iowa so I can stop in at Trostel’s Greenbriar in Johnston.
The Beef Checkoff conducts this annual restaurant awards program. The winners received their awards and recognition here onstage at the Friday general session.
I interviewed “Innovator of the Year” winners, chef, Troy Trostel, and General Manager, Suzanne Summy.
You can listen to my interview with Troy & Suzanne here:
Trostel’s Interview (3:26 min. MP3 File)
They brought me a picture and audio and I’m happy to let you know what the folks at 
Our U. S. Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Johanns, was on the program early today here at the Cattle Industry Convention. He spoke for about 25 minutes before taking some questions from the floor. 
This is a big head table. Kind of hard to get into one shot. You’ll have to listen to the audio to hear their introduction by Joe Schuele, NCBA. This is the Cattle Industry Convention Media Forum just prior to our reception this evening. The event was sponsored by 
Since I’m doing so much coverage of the Cattle Industry Convention and since I couldn’t attend the 
The chairman of the Cattlemen’s Beef Board is Al Svajgr. I caught him for just a couple minutes this morning in the media room. He’s one busy man this week. In my interview Al talks about the new long range plan and what he most wants cattlemen to know about the Checkoff. He also explains why they decided to 
We had a secret mystery guest here at the convention. He’s Sam Elliott. You have hopefully heard his voice on a beef commercial somewhere, sometime. Sam didn’t prepare a speech. He spoke in a very genuine voice about his past, including his first memory of riding a horse. He spoke about how full circle he feels like his career has come to now be the spokesperson for the beef indusry. You can hear his unforgettable words at the end of his remarks.
If you know you’re going to be entertaining clients a lot then why not buy a brewery? That’s what Alltech did. In their booth they are serving some very fine 
There’s all kinds of activities in the booths this year. The Bayer booth had a very amusing pool shark. He had quite a crowd so I guess he was entertaining.