05/23/08 Wash Beef Commission gets WSDA grant for video

Washington Ag May 23, 2008 The Washington State Department of Agriculture recently approved 16 grants totaling more than 200-thousand dollars to promote Washington's food and agriculture industry. The Legislature established the grant program several years ago. The Washington State Beef Commission is one of the recipients. Administrator Patti Brumbach says the 20-thousand dollar grant the Commission is receiving will be used to produce a video about beef production. Brumbach: "What we applied for the grant for was to develop a video that would help us tell Washington's beef production story from pasture to plate. The whole idea of it is to put a face on the people who are producing the safe and wholesome beef our consumers enjoy." Brumbach says the Beef Commission has a variety of ways the video will be used. Brumbach: "We have a ton of consumer events we will use it at. Of course the Cougar Gridiron Classic will use segments from that. We plan to stream portions and interviews from the video, producer interviews, right on our website. We have a wide variety of opportunities to use those and I think even the Department of Agriculture would use them in export markets." The Beef Commission hopes to have the video completed by the end of August just in time for the Cougar Gridiron Classic. I'm Bob Hoff.