11/07/06 USMEF chairman`s goals in 07

American Rancher November 7, 2006 The corporate affairs manager for Elanco Animal Health, Dennis Erpelding, was installed as chairman of the U.S. Meat Export Federation at the organization's Strategic Marketing and Planning Conference last week. It's USMEF's 30th year and Erpelding says one of his objectives for this coming year is to take a hard look at strategic planning. Erpelding: "It has been a couple of years since we've stepped back and said where do we want to go in the next three to five years. So we are going to work with the beef sector, the pork sector, the lamb sector, as well as the other sectors and update our strategic plan of where we want to go in the next five years. That will be a major initiative we will launch here in the next couple of weeks and says build our global strategic approach for meat exports for putting red meat on the global table." Erpelding says another important role for USMEF is to show how the U.S. meat industry cares about consumers in the rest of the world. Erpelding: "We need to be good citizens, good corporate citizens from the standpoint of if we are the major importer into that market that has some responsibilities that go with it. So how do we work with them so they understand we care about what their concerns our. We understand their government criteria. Their consumer perspective. So how do we become good citizens in the markets where we operate." USMEF is the trade association responsible for developing international markets for the U.S. red meat industry and is funded in part by checkoff programs like beef, lamb and pork. I'm Bob Hoff.