HARRINGTON, Del. — It’s not just about a nice cut of meat.
Consumers still look at price and taste, but when they buy meat, they’re also concerned about cattle health, safety and environmental stewardship.
The Beef Quality Assurance program, a national effort, tries to educate the public about the care that goes into raising those cattle. It’s generally commonsense, good-husbandry efforts like providing the best food and cleanest water, quarantining new livestock, following a careful antibiotic plan and having emergency plans in place.
Educating the public about BQA leads to more consumer confidence and a better perception of farmers, according to speakers at Delaware’s annual Agriculture Week held in Harrington from Jan. 13-16. A beef cattle producers session on Monday, Jan. 13, focused heavily on the BQA program.
“These are things you are probably already doing,” said Courtney Gray of the Pennsylvania Beef Council.
“Many consumers are happy simply knowing that the program exists,” said Chase DeCoite, the National Cattleman’s Beef Association director of Beef Quality Assurance.
While many consumers are happy, many others have questions and remain poorly informed about how cattle are raised.
“There are more questions than ever. There is more competition than ever. We have a lot of ground to make up,” DeCoite said.
“Beef Quality Assurance is a nationally coordinated, state implemented program that provides systematic information to U.S. beef producers and beef consumers of how common sense husbandry techniques can be coupled with accepted scientific knowledge to raise cattle under optimum management and environmental conditions,” according to the BQA website. “BQA guidelines are designed to make certain all beef consumers can take pride in what they purchase — and can trust and have confidence in the entire beef industry. When better quality beef reaches the supermarket, consumers are more confident in the beef they are buying, and this increases beef consumption.”
BQA ads sometimes include the phrase “the right way is the only way.” Those ads tend to feature pastoral scenes of grazing cattle and idyllic farms with families and children clustered around the table eating. They also feature the distinctive “Beef, it’s what’s for dinner” campaign.
He said that studies after people have been given some basic information about BQA tend to yield a better consumer perception of the beef industry. He said the positive perception of the industry rose from 24% up to 40%, the strongly positive impression rose from 20% to 30% and the strongly negative reaction dipped from 5% down to only 2%.
Consumers have questions and want information, he said. “We have a story to tell and that’s our opportunity to tell it,” he said.
Still, some consumers take a wait and see attitude. “Education is one thing, but having it practiced and implemented is another,” was the reaction of one consumer surveyed.
Gray listed 10 general areas covered by the program. Some of these areas include biosecurity, herd health, environmental stewardship, emergency management and transportation. They tend to be simple things, like having a good veterinarian, an escape route for animals in case of fire, good record keeping (at least two years is recommended) and a plan to deal with water runoff.
“Simple things can make a big difference,” she said.
As an example, Gray said the industry started noticing more lesions on animals and traced the problem to transportation because larger animals were getting bruised as they were transported. The industry took a closer look at how to better handle the large animals and the bruising decreased.
For more information on BQA certification or standards, go to bqa.org
