  BeefTalk:
Can the Cow Do What We Want Her To Do?
By Kris Ringwall, Extension Beef Specialist,
NDSU Extension Service
Buzzwords within the corporate world today are vision and focus. Attend any
meeting (which may be especially challenging if you are calving, seeding,
haying, fencing, etc.) and you will hear those two words.
It is important to open up your mind, to have a vision and focus. The beef
industry, definitely is at a point that requires a vision and focus. Producers
are experiencing pressure from all angles and something has to give.
Business as usual is not something that will sustain beef producers. The
pressure of the business is analogous to the established fact that the surface
of the earth is made up of floating plates. Over the millenia, these plates have
floated around resulting in the current makeup of the continents we all live on.
Those who live near areas where these plates touch certainly understand the
concept of two forces meeting. Something must give, and often the result is an
earthquake.
The beef industry may not experience quite that much pressure but the same
principle is brewing. Something must give. The easy question is should we hunt
or not?
History will tell us that beef production evolved as a result of progressive,
conservation minded individuals utilizing the land base. The vision and focus
through the process was not producing choice beef, but rather consuming what the
land produced, i.e. meat. For thousands of years, people were satisfied with the
product and actually learned to cook appropriately.
In the past decade or two maybe--but certainly not centuries--a force of
knowledge has enabled us to more thoroughly evaluate the beef product with a
evolving set of demands from the processor and the end user.
The net result has been a clash of the two plates, if you recall the previous
analogy. On one plate is a beef industry entrenched in the land. That land is
capable of producing beef but not as uniform and prepackaged as desired. On the
other plate are producers, processors and consumers increasing demands for
quality and specifications that the old cow may never have been designed to
create.
The vision and focus of the beef industry, according to the marketing experts
of the country, is to give people what they want. A major unanswered question
is: Can we realistically expect all forces to agree on the quality of the end
product? This means meshing production capabilities with end product desires.
Producing what people want is the American way of business, but, do we want too
much?
The other day at our house, all those knowledgeable in cooking were gone.
Just the boys and I were home. We headed to the local store, debated about the
deli or preprocessed meat or a nice London broil special (which won out).
Late in the afternoon, the boys and I pulled out some tin foil, placed the
beef on the foil, placed several cuts across the meat and added a sprinkle of
spices until we were satisfied. We set the oven at 350 degrees, put the meat in
the oven and waited. (After briefly checking the Betty Crocker cookbook, we
breathed a sigh of relief after finding London broil was actually in the book
and we hadn’t deviated too far from Betty’s recommendations.)
Realizing no one else was there to add the extra side dishes, a can of beans
and bread topped off the meal. The end result was an excellent beef supper.
Eating the real product is what life is all about. Our ancestors thought so,
and perhaps understood the proper equation is to eat what the land provides, not
to eat what we want. Do we change the industry, the product or should we learn
to cook and take up hunter safety?
The answer, perhaps, is somewhere in the middle, where both plates need to
give little.
May you find all your ear tags.
Your comments are always welcome at
www.BeefTalk.com. For more information,
contact the North Dakota Beef Cattle Improvement Association, 1133 State Avenue,
Dickinson, ND 58601 or go to
www.CHAPS2000.com on the Internet. In
correspondence about this column, refer to BT0146.
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Source: Kris Ringwall, (701) 483-2427, kringwal@ndsuext.nodak.edu
Editor: Tom Jirik, (701) 231-9629, tjirik@ndsuext.nodak.edu
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