Modified-live vaccines. The flat iron steak. Timed breeding protocols. Without beef researchers, farmers and ranchers across the country wouldn’t have all the products and applied technology that help them manage better. Consumers wouldn’t benefit from the rising beef quality they’ve enjoyed during the last decade. Without people like Bridget Wasser, Larry Kuehn and Jon Schreffler the best answers might go unshared. These are the ones who not only do the research, but also help apply it.
The study of why we eat beef keeps pointing past tenderness. Given only certified tender strip steaks that varied in marbling and juiciness, a carefully chosen panel of 120 consumers said flavor is where it’s at. Sensory evaluation research, as part of a joint project among Texas Tech, Utah State and Mississippi State universities, scored the strip-loin steaks to get at the role of taste fat in consumer appeal.
Marbling in cattle—the taste fat—was long considered the feedlot’s responsibility, until research pointed to opportunities all the way back to the ranch.
Winners of the Kansas Angus Association’s 2014 Carcass Data Project (CDP) are old hands at raising high-quality cattle.
The top three contestants had elite level scores, but John Wendling’s winning entry stands out above the rest.
Doing more with less. In the cattle business, that’s more than a nice idea; it’s the new survival plan.
“In any manufacturing system, if the number of units is reduced, the revenue per unit must increase,” said Pete Anderson, director of research for Midwest PMS, a U.S. livestock feed company. “The cattle industry must focus on maximizing revenue from each animal produced.”
One of our Black Ink Basics Tech Sheets spells out a $57.69/head grid advantage for docile cattle compared to nervous counterparts.
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