Agricultural News
Beef Quality Assurance Efforts Have Done a World of Good for Beef Industry
Fri, 21 May 2010 6:16:44 CDT
Dr. Bob Smith helped kick off the International Symposium on Beef Cattle Welfare in Manhattan, Kansas on Wednesday evening- and the Stillwater, Oklahoma Veterinarian spoke about the Beef Industry's efforts to transfer standards of animal care developed by academia and others down to the producer level.
Dr. Smith says that a lot of this work got off the ground back in 2002, as beef cattle care guidelines were developed by a panel of animal well being experts like Dr. Temple Grandlin and others- in consultation with cattle producers around the country.
These guidelines have gone out to cattle producers around the country and have been a key part of the BQA efforts of the industry.
We talked with Dr. Smith about these efforts- and how the industry has had to ramp up beef quality assurance training efforts since the HSUS release of the video from the packing plant in California. You can click on the Listen Bar below to hear our full conversation with him.
Following graduation from veterinary school at Kansas State, he completed an internship in Large Animal Medicine and Surgery at Oklahoma State University. Except for a year and a half in private feedlot practice in the early 90's, he was at Oklahoma State until 2001 where he served as a field services clinician (farm and ranch calls) for 15 years, and finally held the McCasland Chair in Beef Health and Production. In that position, he was responsible for beef cattle extension, stocker cattle research, and industry service. Currently he is in private practice with five other veterinarians at Veterinary Research and Consulting Services, working with feedlot and stocker cattle clients across the high plains. His clients have a one time capacity of 1500 to 60,000 cattle.
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