Quality starts here?

[grassfarmer]

I spoke with my vet this afternoon and he was trying to interest me in attending a "quality starts here" meeting in the summer.
Now I'm aware of the kind of quality issues they write about and am conscious that we have a duty to produce a good and safe product to consumers. However I am concerned that this will become just another scheme financed by primary producers for the sole benefit of processors and retailers.
In the UK we had the "farm assured" scheme which was a make work project to reassure consumers of the safety of their food supply. Initially we were encouraged to join the free scheme, get a free inspection done and then after making necessary changes to our practises we would be approved and be able to sell our product to buyers who were willing to pay a premium for them.
Didn't quite work out that way - after a few people were approved there
emerged a two tier pricing system farm assured or non farm assured - at a discounted price. Over time the price difference became significant but the farm assurance process also changed - now you pay for an annual inspection and the rules and extra record keeping are a lot stricter than at the outset.
The retailers get a premium product they can advertise as farm assured but it costs them nothing which I don't thing is right.
Will we go down this road here to or will producers unite (is that even possible?) and say yes we will provide proof of the quality of our production protocols but we want paid for the extra expenses incurred?

[Bez]

Wife and i were among the first 12 in Ontario to go this route.

While it does have it's good points, the one thing I was expecting DID NOT happen.

Despite all of the extra work, and all of the extra expense and all of the extra extra's - we did not realize one penny of additional money at the salebarn.

May be different in your part of the world, but here a guaranteed castrated, vaccinated, healthy or your money back and all records included animal made us no extra money.

Now on the other hand, there are people that could stand to do a little more record keeping and put a little more effort into raising their cattle. But in the end they will only do what they will get paid for.

Our place is a business - it is NOT a hotel for cattle. If QSH qualification had provided additional income then we would have been happy.

Since BSE hit, we have ignored the advice of most experts - put less into our cattle and in fact the animals appear to have done better! I do not always agree with doing things the way Gramp's did, but there were some things that he did that were good - we are just discovering that.

Lowest cost producer usually wins.

Best regards,

Bez

[grassfarmer]

That's kind of what I feared the result would be Bez. Truth is you can sell cattle as you describe, properly castrated, dehorned with no short ears or tails in uniform lots, pre-weaned, pre-vaccinated with all the necessary information provided and get a premium for them just now - from the market. Why the need for a "program" to monitor it all? Just another make work project in my mind.

[cakadu]

Sounds like the Flock Health Program that they have for sheep - in recent years they have really been struggling. You do these things to get to a higher level i.e. achieving a certain level of health in the flock, as well on farm food safety and being environmentally friendly and you still only get $0.80/lb live if you are lucky - IF you play in the commodity market, which is similar to the beef sector.

Consumers are looking for these things and the premium - more specifically the value-adding and consumer focused marketing - gets paid to the producer if you are direct marketing.

I am all for these things - don't get me wrong - and I strongly believe in food safety and environmental sustainability.

This is fast becoming a social issue and through the implementation of ecological goods and services (also known as natural capital), producers and/or landowners will eventually get some form of payment for providing them. It is my understanding that the next round of the Ag Policy Framework is based on the notion of EGS.

The time has come for the producer to be paid for providing high quality, safe food.

[15444]

Similar to Bez, I did the Quality Starts Here (QSH) bit a few years ago when it was just in it's infancy in Ontario. Didn't have a clue as to how intense the record keeping was, but got the certificate and avoided the hassle of the audits. Our herd record keeping, both purebred and commercial, is among some of the best in our area, so record keeping wasn't a problem to start with. The reason I took the course was due to the fact that, at the time, QSH was pushing to have their program verified and officially excepted by the CFIA, so it could become mandatory for all beef producers. I suspect that QSH and CFIA both have backed away from this for the time being. I never bought into the idea that the QSH tags would bring a premium....similar as to how we don't pre-vaccinate. We sell into a general calf sale every year, where pre-vaccination (and in some cases, dehorning and castration) are just overlooked as every animal gets shot, viewed and felt at the feedlot anyways. Most of our continuous order buyers only penalize those animals which are poor looking or the wrong breed.

[cowman]

At the markets I attend they sure nail you if the calves have horns, aren't cut, have short ears. You will be discounted heavily on those calves. They don't pay any kind of premium for prevaccination or pre weaning.
The only "premium" you might get is a slight one if they are the right color or if they are especially good cattle.
Those old cattle buyers know which calves are going to go out and get the job done in the feedlot...after all it is their bread and butter?
Fads come and go but in my opinion a solid bodied calf with lots of bone and a good healthy hair coat, who pushes that scale down will always be close to the top of the market?
In reality there is little excuse for horns or uncut calves at the market? It shows the owner really isn't interested in raising what the market desires. As far as short ears go...don't sell them! Keep them at home and raise them to yearlings. Suddenly all the "stories" about how short eared calves are so risky become irrevalent? Don't let them screw you over an inch or two of ears!

[cowman]

15444: Which breeds of cattle would you say the buyers discriminate against? At my local mart they pay a lot less for straight bred herefords, and definitely Shorthorns.
They used to be pretty tough on Simmentals but that is sort of fading. And of course they roast anything that looks like a hairy Yak!
They either want them black with a lot of Angus influence, or a big buckskin calf(char cross).

[grassfarmer]

I would beg to differ with the no premium for prevaccinated, preweaned calves. I understand that this program was pushed a few years back and wasn't very popular with buyers but has been kind of relaunched in recent years with the pfizer gold type programs.
I've preconditioned(not in any recognised program but as an individual with a protocol developed with my vet) since 2001 and have got a premium every year. I agree to get the premiums you need very good cattle to start with but I feel I have been well paid for prevaccinating. Preweaning and holding off the market when it is at it's peak numbers in the Fall run has paid for itself every year too.

[grassfarmer]

cowman different markets are tough for different breeds. Rimbey/Ponoka are great for black limo cattle, limo influence cattle etc.
I think that the white char cattle are being discounted some of late.
Whatever makes a dollar for the producer is the one they should stick with.

[grassfarmer]

Our vet has a Total Herd Health program available, producers pay so much per herd for basic services, discounts for pharmaceuticals etc. My neighbour has been on the program for six years and they seem to be continually running their cattle through the chute and giving them an injection for something.
I am willing to bet that their costs are more on the health program than if they did the basic vaccinations and got the vet to test their bulls, preg test etc.

[15444]

Cowman, the breeds that get discriminated against are the ones you mentioned. Straightbred Herefords, Shorthorns (pure or cross), Straightbred Simmentals and any poor looking Heinz 57. Not sure on the crossbred Simmentals, some buyers really discount them and some don't. Hairy ones don't seem to deter the buyers. But as expected, they go wild for anything that is black or blonde. Angus (pure and cross), Char (pure and cross) and Limousin (pure and cross) get the buyers really riled up, especially in the bigger lots.

Colour still rules the yards. We ship one or two calves almost every year that are black baldie-looking calves, except they are Holstein-Hereford crosses. Beautiful calves in the fall, glossy and shining all over...but they scare the hell out you when you see them as yearlings. Turn into big, overgrown, thin brutes. Had those calves taken on a Holstein pattern, we would have been discounted hard and deep. But because the look like baldies, they fetch us a premium over anything else we take. Makes me wonder how guys ever did if they crossed the traditional Simmentals with Angus. Bunch of Holstien patterned calves in the fall I would suspect.

[kato]

The way a preconditioning program will help is if the buyer recognizes that your calves are the ones that don't land in the sick pen at the feedlot. We've bought calves to background where every one with a particular matching eartag will end up sick. If we can figure out who's they were, that's who's avoided next year.

Buyers who ship cattle off to a customer won't know, but I bet the ones who buy to feed themselves will sure know who's done their homework on their calves. In our local market that can hurt you bad. These guys will recognize a man's cattle, and even though they look just fine in the ring, they are going for a lot less than other similar looking calves. If you see that happen you can bet there's a history behind the herd.

The pigs in Manitoba already have a Quality Assurance program. It involves an on farm inspection every three years, and an office visit to review the operation once a year. There is a 5 dollar discount on any market hog that goes through the marketing board without having come from a CQA herd. (I have no idea where it goes.)For the big operators who ship a few hundred a week, that's a good amount of money, so the sign up rate is high. For pigs it's more a matter of not being discounted rather than being rewarded for the extra work. Legalized ransom?

Most of the quality assurance things they are asking for are already being done on most operations. For those, it's just more paperwork, and won't change the way they run their herds one little bit. For the poorer managers, well, that's a different story....

[grassfarmer]

15444, don't know about Canada but they resolved that one about 1972 in the UK. As the first imports there were used on dairy as well as beef cattle they quickly learnt that red bred black and white whereas yellow bred brown calves. The predominate purebred Simmental colour in the UK is definately yellow and white. Apart from the purebreds you very rarely get yellow and white offspring - they breed brown on blacks/ black and white cows and red/red and white on red colour cows.

[grassfarmer]

grassfarmer I think that the predominant color for Simi and Simi cross here now is dark red. The light colored Simi's have really gone out of style over the past few years. Dark limo are certainly favored over the very light golden color. I have a couple of the lighter colored fullblood cows here but always use either dark red fullblood or black bulls so the calves are either dark red or black.
Tan Char cross calves are still popular. Black baldies are good mama cows, and if I was going to raise commercial cattle I would have black baldie cows bred limo....

[kpb]

We will not buy any straight British calves to feed over the winter because they simply will not gain. Other than that any crossbred calves with a stretchy body will be bought--we don't care about their color as long as they will gain. Over the last three weeks we've sold a bunch of backgrounded heifers and were very happy with the price--up to .85 for 1025 lbs.

The top sellers for us were black Maines, then blacks with some white, then solid reds, then tans and whites. My personal favorites are anything that has some Maine in them, they gain like crazy, then anything with some Simmi.

And before all you British purebred breeders get up in arms, I like the British breeds for grassing but not for feeding. I've fed for a long time and I've yet to see any pure British calf gain much over the winter. They need to be stretchy and have some obvious exotic blood or feeders will discount them in my humble opinion. At any event I won't be buying the British calves in the fall.


kpb