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Beef/Cattle Extension Program
Biosecurity Update
by Lisa Duffey, Montana Beef Network Coordinator with
Clint Peck, Senior Editor, BEEF Magazine
Quality control is an important part of everyday business.
Certainly livestock production and meat animal food
production is not resistant to the perquisites of quality
control. Managing the quality of the end-products meat
animals yield and protecting their health are two separate
but related ranch production issues. When properly addressed
and tailored to the operations goals and objectives,
health management and quality management can result
in, 1) reduced costs and minimized risk, and, 2) improved
price and premium opportunities.
The reality in today's beef management world is if a producer doesn't manage
for "quality" -at some level and to some degree-there's
little hope for price premiums or, more apt in today's
ever-changing cattle marketing environment -there's
a chance for significant, if not severe, price discounts.
Comments made by Dr. Gary Smith, Colorado State University
meats scientist, and arguably the world's foremost authority
on beef supply chain management, when he visited Montana
last spring underscore the link between animal health
and beef quality management programs.
"Each time you treat an animal for a sickness in a feedyard, you run the risk
of losing a quality grade and a tenderness score," Smith
says.
He puts it even more succinctly.
"If you're going to sell commodity cattle, you'd better expect to receive commodity
prices."
Therefore, increasingly, ranchers are adopting standard operating procedures
(SOP) and good management practices (GMP) to help reduce
the many variables that exist in the ranching environment.
Many of these practices and procedures are aimed directly
at adding value and/or reducing the chance of discounts
down the road.
Using these principles, ranchers can also help the overall
beef industry by alleviating concerns over food wholesomeness
and safety. It's critical that the consuming public know
the beef they eat is safe, wholesome and can be a nutritious
and healthy component of their diet. From ranch to retailer,
and even when product is handed off to the next link in
the chain, there is no reason or excuse not to make quality
control measures a part of your everyday ranching activities.
HACCP Gone Beef
Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) programs are not new. The concept was born in 1982
on a national scale by beef producers aiming to address
the government's concern for an organized approach to
avoid violative residues in food. At its inception beef
had the lowest residue rate of all red meats- well below
government targets for other foods. That low residue
rate has even gotten lower and is literally non-existent
in finished fed beef today.
Because the majority of beef is still raised in this country by small independent
producers in a vast variety of environmental climates,
the BQA program has been modified and adapted to meet
the needs of a wide range of production and marketing
circumstances. In Montana and elsewhere, the principles
of BQA are the same as those developed by Pillsbury
for the quality control program they developed for supplying
food to the NASA space program. Their program, the Hazard
Analysis, Critical Control Point program (HACCP), gained
USDA acceptance and is presently the dominant outline
for quality assurance programs in processed foods.
In addition, all federally and state inspected meat packing
plants in the U.S. have developed HACCP programs. All
foreign plants exporting beef to the U.S. - and to their
other international customers - must have HACCP or HACCP-type
programs in place in order to maintain their export certification.
All plants, domestic or otherwise, are subject to unannounced
premises inspection, including documentation of all production
procedures.
But, the additional step that's being asked more and more
of our industry is validation or verification.
It's understandable that ranchers are concerned about the complexity of developing
site-specific quality control plans, the paperwork (or
computer work) required to maintain the system, and
the need for a third-party audit to verify its effectiveness.
More often than not, here and around the country, we
see market-driven application of ID systems becoming
the rule rather than the exception. Today it's up to
the individual to decide just when and how far to get
their traceability oars into the water.
New Paradigms in BQA
In addition, the HACCP approach used adjunct to BQA programs
has great potential in the security and biosecurity concerns
of livestock operations. A central objective in the HACCP
system is to prevent, eliminate or reduce to an acceptable
level a production practice that will negatively impact
profitability and end-product quality. In livestock management
terms, genetics/reproduction, nutrition, health/well being
and animal handling are all areas where HACCP can be applied
to improve profitability and quality.
From a health management standpoint, breaches in biosecurity are often the root
of livestock disease and infection. Applied biosecurity
management and practices can prevent, minimize and/or
control cross-contamination of body fluids (feces, urine,
saliva, etc.) between animals, animals to feed and animals
to equipment that may directly or indirectly contacts
animals. Biosecurity means preventing the spread of
disease by minimizing the movement of biologic organisms
(viruses, bacteria, rodents, etc.) onto and within an
operation.
But biosecurity can be very difficult to maintain because the interrelationships
between management, biologic organisms and biosecurity
are very complex, points out Dee Griffin, veterinarian
with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Great Plains
Veterinary Educational Center. While developing and
maintaining biosecurity is difficult, it is the cheapest,
most effective means of disease control available and
no disease prevention program will work without it.
Therefore, beyond and in addition to the traditional BQA efforts, a focus of
the Montana BQA program, from here forward will be on
programs designed to demonstrate how biosecurity-security
can be applied to meet the specific needs of Montana
livestock operations, adjusted to the different ages
of cattle handled or targeted diseases.
Speaking of which... the BVD-PI Screening Project
The Montana BVD-PI Herd Screening Project is being initiated to investigate the
role of BVD PI screening in improving the overall health
of Montana's cow herd and adding value to the state's
calf crop. The project is one example of a "management-over-medicine"
approach to the lessons being taught by Drs. Smith and
Griffin. At press time, and about half-way through the
first year's spring-phase of the project, managers and
participants were facing a "good news, bad news" scenario
indicating how important biosecurity is to preventing
BVD and the "production" of persistently infected calves.
It appears there will be 25,000-30,000 bulls, heifers and new crop calves screened
by the end of the 2006 traditional branding period.
We expect another 10,000 head of calves to be screened
by mid-fall. Preliminary reports of the project will
be available by mid-summer, with release of the first
year results in December.
The project is designed to: Gauge the prevalence of BVD PI in the state. Demonstrate
innovative screening/diagnostic techniques. r Investigate
the economics of BVD PI elimination on a herd-by-herd
basis. If you're interested in learning more about the
project, please call John Paterson at 406-994-5562.
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