Ag & Range

To meet the grade, they grade the meat

Table Top Meats in Hemmingford, serves up lessons in quality and yield carcass grading.

Owner Clayton Krause is helping teach students alongside Agriculture & Rangeland Management Professor Ron Bolze.

“I think that one of the problems with our industry is the not knowing,” Krause said. “I think its really good advocation for the industry to have these kids here. They go back and tell their friends what they learned here, and it just spreads.”

Bolze has been taking this class out to Table Top Meats every other fall since 2015. The class goes every Tuesday afternoon for the first four weeks of the semester. The students travel to Table Top Meats to help them see things in action and be able to apply the things that they are learning about in class to actual carcasses.

“My favorite part of this class is the hands-on learning,” Jancy Marks, junior from Culbertson said. “It is a lot easier to see things done in real life than just to learn about it.” The course description for the class states “Evaluation of the relationship of form to function of domestic animals for superior production. Various types, classes, grades, and breeds of livestock will be studied.”

Following that desciption the students are learning about live animals and animal carcasses.

During this class the students learn how to grade meat and how to calculate yield grade. The students were able to see how professionals’ grade and practice measuring themselves.

“I like learning how to quality grade and yield grade,” Savannah Solon, junior from Kadoka, South Dakota said. “Its something I’ve always wanted to do. This will help us with our future operations, so we know how to look at our animals and know how they might grade.” Clayton Krause of Table Top Meats, Hemingford, uses a transparent chart Tuesday to measure rib-eye areas of beef carcasses.

ABOVE: Beef carcasses hang from a freezer ceiling at Table Top Meats, Hemingford.

RIGHT: Clayton Krause, owner of Table Top Meats, Hemingford, explains how to evaluate a sheep carcass, Tuesday.

Photos and story by Kamryn Kozisek

12 Sept. 9, 2021 | The Eagle | csceagle.com Ag Range&

Waterfowl, like this flock, interact with livestock at waterways accross the state. Wildlife and waterfowl carry pathogens that could later spread to livestock through waterways.

Photo courtesy USMARC

USMARC investigates water pathogens

u By Alexa Johnson USDA Communication Specialist

Hello everyone, Alexa here! In this article I will share another interesting detail of the USDA ARS, U.S. Meat Animal Research Center (USMARC). You may remember that USMARC originally served as the Naval Ammunition Depot in World War II and the Korean Conflict. One result from the munitions manufacturing activities is a plume of groundwater directly below the Center that is contaminated with chemicals used to make the ammunition. To clean up these residual chemicals, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers developed a Water Reuse Project in 2013 which placed a water treatment system at USMARC to begin the cleanup process.

The Army Corps of Engineers estimates that 50% of the treated water returns to the aquifer, 10% evaporates and the final 40% makes its way through the series of pools where it is stored in a 200-acre lake. The lake is used to control extreme rain events and also for livestock and irrigation, and is used by wildlife. There are nine grade control structures on the seven-mile long stream that create the pools and slow the water to recharge the aquifer. The pools are designed to hold water in the area for maximum storage and aquifer recharge but can be lowered or drained as needed to allow for extreme rain events or other needs of the Center.

Now, after the completion of the Water Reuse Project with all the grade control structures and their holding pools, the waterway contains water along its entire length throughout the year. The presence of more water has attracted a much larger variety of wildlife, and in particular many more migrating waterfowl (ducks, geese, and white pelicans) and other water birds. This waterway, running through the heart of the 35,000-acre USMARC livestock production environment, provides a unique resource for preharvest food safety research.

At USMARC, scientist Dr. Elaine Berry conducts research to monitor how beef cattle production and wildlife interact with the waterway.

I asked Elaine a few questions to help us all better understand her important work.

Elaine, what are the main goals for your research and how does the waterway fit in?

The overall objective of my research is to reduce the risk of human foodborne illness by developing strategies that can be used to reduce transmission of disease-causing bacteria (pathogens) from livestock production or wildlife to food, water, and the environment. These pathogens naturally occur in the environment and the source could be wildlife or animals raised for food. Reducing cattle exposure to pathogens is important to achieving reduced risk of foodborne illness, and here is where the waterway is important to the research.

Sounds interesting! Can migratory waterfowl affect the prevalence of pathogens in cattle?

That is one question that this research is asking. With the waterway full of water, we now have a natural laboratory that reflects the same circumstances that many farmers and ranchers have on their lands. This allows us to study ways to reduce transmission risk when livestock production interacts with wildlife. Ducks and geese are carriers of a wide variety of pathogens, and these migratory species are considered high risk for spreading them along migration routes. This region of Nebraska and the USMARC are located in the bottleneck portion of the Central Flyway, and large flocks of these waterfowl visit lagoons and other surface water in our area during fall and spring migration. However, the research isn’t just about waterfowl, but also other wild animals and birds. The cattle rarely have access to the waterway, but other wild animals and birds do, and these animals may expose other cattle in the production environment.

What samples do you collect and what are you looking for in them?

We collect water samples from the waterway, and fresh feces and scat samples from the animals. We analyze these for the presence of three pathogenic bacteria species that are common in wildlife and the environment, that can also commonly be carried by cattle, and could cause foodborne illness in humans. We compare the DNA fingerprints of the pathogens we find in the waterfowl, other wildlife, cattle, and the environment to see how these pathogens move naturally through cattle production environments.

Because this waterway and the USMARC combine to create a natural “laboratory” that mimics commercial cattle production, we can study these real problems that cattle producers and feeders face in their own operations. USMARC cattle are monitored daily for signs of disease and treated by our veterinarians if needed. In addition, all of our animal handlers receive biosafety training that provides them with the knowledge and tools to protect themselves from potential exposures and to prevent the spread of diseases from sick animals to healthy animals.

A natural laboratory, that is great! How are you using it to solve food safety problems?

We are using the USMARC and the waterway to identify the potential sources, routes, risks, and other factors that can affect the transmission of these pathogens into the human food chain. Understanding these factors and identifying the important targets are critical steps in developing preharvest food safety strategies to reduce the transmission of these pathogens to cattle, and thereby reduce the risk of foodborne illness. Having this natural laboratory helps the USMARC to develop effective solutions to solve high priority problems for the U.S. livestock industry and safe meat products for U.S. consumers.