EXECUTIVE CORNER
MAKE THE MOVE TO by Darrell Wilkes, Ph.D., International Brangus Breeders Association executive vice president
I am sometimes accused of being on a soapbox when it comes to the quality revolution that is taking place in the beef industry. I’ll gladly accept that criticism. Like many of you who are reading this article, I was deeply involved in the beef industry during the “non-glory” days. Demand for beef was in a nosedive. Anybody who owned cows during those years of the 70’s through 90’s, or anybody with a mortgage on their ranch, had to wonder if they were making a horrible decision by not bailing out while cows and ranches were still worth something (albeit not very much). Many of my rancher friends were encouraging their kids to pursue a career outside of the beef industry. Per capita beef consumption dropped by 20 lbs, or about 25%. And just to add some salt to the wound, while the per capita consumption was declining, the inflation-adjusted price was declining too. When an industry sells less of its product at a lower and lower price, there is no other way to say it – it is a demand disaster. Many factors were at play during this time. Beef was cast as a bad actor from a nutritional standpoint -- heart disease, cholesterol, fat in the diet – etc. The government started giving dietary advice that wasn’t very kind to beef (remember the food pyramid?). The beef industry fought back, thanks to the beef check-off, and began busting some of the misperceptions about beef. We discovered that some cholesterol is “good cholesterol”, and beef had more than its share. We started pointing out the nutrient density of beef – iron, essential amino acids, etc. As an industry, we threw our resources together and made a strong case that beef fits perfectly well in a healthful diet. In short, we fought back with facts and turned the tide. While the industry was fighting this fight and winning, we had other issues with our product that weren’t getting enough
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SPRING 2022
Quality
attention. The first National Beef Quality Audit was completed in 1992 and showed that the beef industry was not producing the mix of quality grades that the marketplace preferred. As a result, we were not only giving up some money, we were turning off some consumers. We learned that up to a third of less-thanChoice steaks failed to satisfy consumers – lacking tenderness, flavor, etc. This shouldn’t have surprised anybody. There was a time when carcasses that would not grade Choice were not quality-graded at all. They were not rolled with the ink roller used by graders and were called, literally, “no rolls”. No-rolls comprised nearly half of the carcasses from fed steers and heifers in the mid 80’s – a time when demand was declining rapidly. That category contained carcasses that would grade Select today, along with a good number of carcasses that would grade Standard under today’s grading system. A friend of mine in the packing industry told me that they offered this product under the label of SES – “Special Economy Selection”. He then quipped that, internally, they called it SES for “Sure Enough S#&t” – use your imagination. The beef industry finally had to admit that the demand decline for beef was not only a perception problem, it was a quality problem. Not everybody in the beef industry was willing to accept that, so they denied it and lagged behind. Others accepted the challenge and started RAISING BETTER CATTLE!! Today, nearly 85% of all beef produced from fed steers and heifers grades Choice or higher. The percent Prime has jumped from 2% to 10%. Beef in the upper section of the Choice grade has doubled. Meanwhile, the demand curve for beef has turned sharply higher. The demand curve is virtually parallel to the quality curve. It is not a coincidence. It is an obvious cause-and-effect relationship. Better quality equals stronger demand. Again, this should not surprise anybody. It holds true in virtually every industry. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, this quality revolution is seen by many as a threat to indicus-influenced cattle because, historically, indicus influence has been a negative factor when it comes to marbling, which is the primary determinant of USDA quality grade. The biggest mistake that breeders of indicusinfluenced cattle can make is to chalk this all up to a “perception problem”. Just like the beef industry at large had to finally admit that it had a genuine quality problem (not just a
