Agricultural News
CAB's John Stika Celebrates the "Team Effort" That Produced a Record 1.12 Billion lbs. of CAB Beef
Wed, 18 Oct 2017 16:36:37 CDT
A third year of herd expansion. The world's largest branded beef program knew it would have both a challenge and an opportunity with supply heading into the 2017 fiscal year.
Ranching, retail and foodservice partners took full advantage.
"2017 for Certified Angus Beef will mark the 13th consecutive year of growth," said John Stika, president of Certified Angus Beef LLC. "It will mark the 11th record sales year in a row and now the second time that Certified Angus Beef brand sales have tallied more than a billion pounds, coming in at 1,120,000,000 as we close our fiscal year."
To watch a video clip featuring John Stika, president of Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB), talking about how partners all along the beef chain helped the brand achieve another milestone, and what that means to cattlemen, click or tap the PLAYBOX in the window below.
That increase came from all areas-each division from international to foodservice to retail saw growth.
Stika first credits cattlemen and women for producing more high-quality beef to sell.
"This past year, we had a record 29.6 percent of all Angus cattle meet our 10 specifications for quality. That says a lot about what cattlemen have built," Stika said. "To give that some perspective, if you go back to 2006, Certified Angus Beef acceptance rates were only 14 percent. If you look beyond that, on a carcass count basis, Certified Angus Beef only represented 6.6 percent of the entire fed cattle industry at that time."
In 2006, U-S-D-A Select was 37.5 percent of the total. Today, C-A-B makes up 18.4 percent of the entire fed cattle industry-a greater percentage than Select.
"Cattlemen have responded in a big way," he remarked, "and I think it says a lot about how the beef industry has aligned with consumers and in doing so it's created a more sustainable future for all of us involved."
With success comes the question: Can the brand continue to grow year after year?
"Well you've got to have passion to think you can get it done, but there's got to be a lot of metrics in place to help make that hope and that passion a reality," Stika concluded Without a doubt, the fact that cattlemen stepped up like they did over the last-honestly 11 years, as relates to our brand-really set us up to add more fuel to the fire, so to speak, by strong marketing, committed partners. That's really what makes it all work. Through the brand, we're all part of something bigger than ourselves. When you put it all together, that's what this successful year represents."
Source - Certified Angus Beef
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