Beef association committed to reaching members across the state

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The Illinois Beef Association is focused on outreach to all sectors of the beef industry.

“This past year, our board committed additional funding and established a program focus to be out in the countryside,” said Josh St. Peters, executive vice president of the IBA.

“We’ve covered everything from BQA to a calving school, live cattle marketing programs, risk management, permitting and siting of new barns, open houses and nutrient management planning,” said St. Peters during the IBA Annual Meeting.

“I’ve been to more than 60 counties during the last 12 months and we’ve made it a focus to be present with our members beyond the work we do in Springfield,” he said.

In addition, IBA also stays engaged on national events by attending meetings in Denver; Kansas City, Mo.; Orlando, Fla.; St. Louis; and Washington, D.C.

“IBA board members, leaders and staff have represented our state in industry meetings about meat exports, beef marketing and federal policy,” St. Peters said.

The IBA Beef Leadership Academy is a program for producers 22 to 40 years old.

“This is a multifaceted program that’s leadership development and much more,” St. Peters said. “We talk about industry issues, visit with legislators and we look at the entire value chain from the farm to the consumer.”

For the checkoff division, IBA partnered with the Federation of State Beef Councils to put together a program with a national company using an app.

“That let us target shoppers who were in the store beef section,” St. Peters said.

“We put forward marketing messages that compelled shoppers to look at ribeyes, New York strips and 90/10 ground beef,” he said.

A great aspect of digital marketing is the ability to measure the effect of the marketing campaign.

“For every dollar we spent in marketing through that app, we saw $157 return on investment on beef sales — and that’s an 18% bump in those stores in Illinois alone targeting those three beef products,” St. Peters said.

“It let us hit more than 260,000 households with more than 840,000 impressions,” he said. “This is one example of how we’re trying to use your checkoff dollars to be efficient and highly productive.”

Animal Traceability

Also during the annual meeting, a discussion focused on animal traceability and the final animal disease traceability rule announced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services.

“The rule says all sexually intact cattle crossing interstate lines need to be electronically identified when they’re 18 months or older, as well as dairy cattle of all age groups and any cattle of any age used for rodeo, exhibition or recreational events,” said Susie Hexum, USDA APHIS Veterinary Services area veterinarian in charge for Illinois.

“If you’re not doing a lot of interstate commerce it’s not going to change how you’re identifying your animals,” said Staci Slager, bureau chief of animal health and welfare at the Illinois Department of Agriculture.

“We have 840 tags, so you can contact our office and receive up to 500 tags for free plus the cost of shipping or you can pick them up.”

The new rule goes into effect on Nov. 5.

“You don’t have to start using the electronic tags until Nov. 5 and anything tagged prior to Nov. 5 will be grandfathered in,” Hexum said. “You do not need to replace tags.”

If a beef operation does not have a premise identification number, now is the time to complete the registration process.

“A premise identification number is required to get the 840 tags,” Slager said. “We assign the tags to your premise, so we know who the tags have gone to.”

The information included with the premise identification is stored in a tightly maintained database, the IDOA bureau chief said.

“The only people that have access are myself and my staff to enter when a tag is assigned,” she said.

“This animal disease traceability was started to be able to show our global trading partners that the U.S. is disease free,” Hexum said.

“This is going to help us secure that even more by how rapidly we can track animals if we do have an outbreak,” the area veterinarian said. “The sooner we can get to the origin of it, the quicker we can stamp the outbreak out and resume our trading.”

“Speed is of the utmost importance to be able to stop the movement of animals and it get it under control before it spreads further,” Slager said.

“I’m assigned eight traces every year where they give me a little bit of information, it might be a tag number or the state it came from,” the IDOA bureau chief said. “I have to locate the animal with records to determine where, when or how it came in the state to show we have the ability to do this for our trade partners.”

“We’re trying to protect the industry, so we need to know how animals are moving,” Hexum said. “We’re gathering information for the next disease.”