Wine & Beef Tasting Event

I'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

We've chatted the last couple of days with Curtis Beus, WSU Extension Okanogan County Director, about the June 13 - 14 WSU Beef Production Conference entitled "Tools & Techniques for the Future", and the informative and educational workshops and demonstrations that will be offered. Also on the conference agenda is a wine and beef tasting event and dinner on that Friday evening featuring the gourmet expertise of Chef Dan Thiessen.

BEUS: Normally it would be our WSU Executive Chef Jamie Callison, but he's in Italy and won't be back in time. But we were lucky enough to find Chef Dan Thiessen who's with the Wine Country Culinary Institute, which is associated with Walla Walla Community College. So, we're going to do several different wines and different cuts of beef and different sauces and he's going to talk about putting wine and beef together.

The Keynote Speaker for that evening will be Dr. Larry Corah with Certified Angus Beef.

BEUS: His talk is simply "Tomorrow's Beef Industry Today" and he's going to cover a number of cross cutting issues, especially dealing with quality and what the consumer is demanding and how we can meet specific issues in terms of quality and in terms of branded beef.

The luncheon speaker on Friday will be Randy Blach, CEO of CattleFax, the nation's leading cattle marketing organization. His address will be on developing opportunities in a global marketing place and whether producers are prepared. Saturday's luncheon speaker will be Dr. Kent Andersen with Zoetis Animal Genetics.

BEUS: His talk is called "New Genetic Tools for Producing, Selecting and Mating Replacement Heifers". His specialty is the whole area of genomic and very specific selection tools that we can develop through looking at genomic markers in our beef cattle and more or less designing the kinds of animals we want in the future.

To register for the conference visit www.beefconference.wsu.edu.

That's Washington Ag Today.

I'm Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.