Recent health scares are driving retail and consumer demand for quality

The beef industry has suffered significant loss of consumer confidence that is now only beginning to recover. Already beset by cholesterol and saturated fat issues, beef has been subject to suspicion about antibiotics, growth promotants and, most recently, BSE. The news in 1996 that bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was implicated in 10 new cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob, a brain disease, worsened an already difficult situation. BSE remains a concern. For example, there was an outbreak in Japan as recently as 2001.

If BSE introduced the notion that the beef industry required unimpeachable source verification, the foot and mouth epidemic in the United Kingdom, Europe and South America in 2001 brought the issue home. Should we have such an outbreak in North America, operators unable to trace the origin of ALL their animals might face catastrophic outcomes – destruction of their entire herd.

Consumer demand for food quality and safety is driving the whole supply chain to reconsider management practices and marketing systems. Retailers, including the fast food industry, butcher shops, grocery stores and branded programs are increasingly responding to consumer concerns about animal welfare, the environment and food purity.

These marketing issues, in combination with increasing concentration in the beef industry, are strong arguments for breeders and cow-calf operators to adopt a new value proposition to increase profitability. Viewtrak gives you the tools to manage and leverage industry changes. Our Beeftrak system makes it easy for producers to participate in premium brand programs. It elevates genetics and herd management to a higher, more repeatable level and offers data-rich potential for both trace-back and correlation analysis.

The positive outcome of the crisis in consumer confidence is that producers have a clear target and a strong motivation to differentiate their products. Consumers who eat less beef will demand that the beef they do eat scores high on taste, tenderness and nutrition. They will want evidence that beef is raised and processed in a healthy and humane manner. Producers and retailers who respond to these needs are the future winners in the supply chain. Only they will be able to prove that they meet brand and quality protocols. Only they will have the option to market to consumers (such as European Union), who demand purity and taste and are prepared to pay the premium.

And they will be doing so because they can provide a verifiable audit trail for every individual – exactly what Beeftrak delivers.