Research, Education, Innovation: Linking the Beef Industry from Farm to Fork
REI Annual Report highlights support a variety of vital checkoff efforts.
Note to Convention Media: REI annual reports are available in media room. For interviews, contact Betty Anne Redson, Director REI Dissemination, 720-318-5938 (cell) 303-850-3348 (office).
During a time when countless challenges face the beef industry, checkoff-funded beef research, education and innovation (REI) efforts provide a foundation on which other checkoff communications and marketing programs can be built. By touching all segments of the beef industry, REI programs form a link from farm to fork.
The REI Annual Report, released during the cattle industry conference, offers examples of consumer confidence-building efforts integrated through key areas: Beef Quality Assurance (BQA); product enhancement, safety, human nutrition and market research; beef innovations and culinary services.
Here are a few highlights from the report:
* BQA: A published, checkoff-funded dairy auction market report helped provide useful information for dairy producers on how to optimize the value of their market cows and bulls – 95 percent of which go directly to harvest
* Instrument Grading – This long-anticipated tool arrived in 2009, due in large part to the $2.5 million in checkoff dollars beef producers invested in bringing the technology to reality
* Safety Research: A research survey quantified the types of pathogen interventions being applied, methods used to validate, sampling procedures and protocols used, and the use of industry Best Practices
* Human Nutrition: Following several years of checkoff research, a comprehensive resource on the epidemiologic associations of red meat and processed meat and cancer has been published under the title, “Red Meat and Processed Meat Consumption and CancerA Technical Summary of the Epidemiologic Evidence.” This 94-page summary concludes “the available epidemiologic evidence is not supportive of a causal relationship between red meat and any of the cancers evaluated.”
* Market Research: In 2009, the team completed 40 research projects to help direct nutrition, safety and product strategies to enhance and improve consumer perceptions of beef
* Beef Innovations Group: The checkoff-funded new chuck roll cuts add an additional $1.4 billion to the industry annually, according to Cattle-Fax
* Culinary Services: To ensure consumers have good experiences, this team conducted between 250 and 300 tests to determine the right cookery methods for chuck roll cuts
For more information about checkoff-funded research projects, go to MyBeefCheckoff.com or BeefResearch.org.
Editor’s Note: This article was provided as a news release by CBB. For more information visit www.beefboard.org.