03/01/2007 New Beef Products

The beef checkoff-funded New Products Development Team has launched more than 100 new product concepts since 1998 and has some exciting offering to debut very soon. What's the goal in developing a continuing supply of new products funded by beef checkoff dollars? Tom Hotz - Iowa producer and chairman of the New Products and Culinary Initiatives Committee - explains. HOTZ: Well ultimately what we're trying to do is increase the price of our product that the producers receive and in doing that we're trying to create more demand so if we can get people to consume more beef, ultimately that will increase the price of our product. Hotz says creating delicious new products and new applications from the underutilized chuck and round continues to be a priority. HOTZ: In the new products area, you know there are certain areas of the carcass that move easier in our society than others so for example our chuck and round have a littler more difficult time moving than our middle meats so we're trying to create new outlets for that and we're doing some work right now with shredded beef. It's an old concept we're revamping. One new product - a steak sandwich - is poised for rollout this year and is expected to appeal widely to consumers. Hotz says appeal can translate to greater beef demand. HOTZ: We did some work creating a steak sandwich and that also came from the round. That is going to be worked a lot with this year and getting out to the public and we're really excited about the opportunity to move a lot more tons of beef with this product. The Beef Checkoff Program was established as part of the 1985 Farm Bill. The checkoff assesses $1 per head on the sale of live domestic and imported cattle, in addition to a comparable assessment on imported beef and beef products. States retain up to 50 cents on the dollar and forward the other 50 cents per head to the Cattlemen's Beef Promotion and Research Board, which administers the national checkoff program, subject to USDA approval. For more information, visit www.beefboard.org. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.