02/21/07 Perfect beef

Perfect Beef Should the beef industry begin an all-out campaign to provide a more consistent product? I'm Jeff Keane; I'll be right back with some thoughts. I just read an editorial by Alan Newport in the Western Farmer-Stockman magazine that contends the U.S. beef industry needs to provide consumers what they wanta more consistent product. Mr. Newport has a good background in the beef processing and marketing segments of our industry and I would have to agree with him we need to provide the consumer what they want so each beef eating experience is enjoyable. His idea is more uniformity in the end product; which he says will be difficult to achieve given the variety of cattle breeds and breeding programs beef producers currently use. Again I would have to agree, but we must be very careful about the standards that are set for that uniformity and just how uniform do we want to be. The chicken and pork industry have a very uniform product that seems to have been based on uniform breeding to produce a product that is consistent in size, leanness, and is borderline tasteless. If the beef industry goes down this road of the perfect product we better remember it must be what the consumer wants, not what some misguided nutritionist or industry leader believes they want. The big variable I see is the fact that not all consumers' tastes are the same. I think it is possible to market a variety of healthy beef for a variety of consumer tastes in our mainstream markets and let the niche markets supply their customers with a specific uniform beef product. I'm Jeff Keane. Western Farmer-Stockman February 2007