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Beef Checkoff dollars tighten
Craig Uden, Chair of the Federation of State Beef Councils, 2012 NAFB Trade Talk
As the drought led cattlemen to shrink their herds so, too, did the dollars shrink to the Beef Checkoff. But, Nebraska cattlemen Craig Uden, who’s chair of the Federation of State Beef Councils, tells Brownfield they are managing well.
“You know as dollars are tighter and we have fewer dollars to do more things,” Uden says, “We really have to dive down and really see what’s going to benefit the beef industry. With costs rising and fewer numbers, we’ve got to do more with less.”
Uden says the operating committee met a few months ago and spent the beef checkoff money “extremely wisely.” He says, “We’re still big advocates of research, particularly on the safety side. We’ve got a lot of emerging issues out there and we have to have credible backstops, you might say, on the safety side. We looked at salmonella and we’re looking at E. coli issues and stuff like that.” Uden says consumer education is also a big focus.
State Beef Councils collect the dollar per head for the checkoff, keep half, then send the rest to the Cattlemen’s Beef Board of the NCBA.
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