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Beef Quality Audit identifies transportation strengths and weaknesses
The latest Beef Quality Audit shows while U.S. livestock haulers have set a high bar, shortcomings remain.
Jesse Fulton with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) says this was the first time the checkoff-funded survey looked at the transportation of market steers and heifers.
“And we see from that cattle mobility has set the bar high for future audits with almost 97 percent of those cattle coming off the truck with no lameness.”
He attributes those high marks to Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) practices used throughout the industry.
Speaking to Brownfield at the Minnesota Cattle Industry Convention last week, Fulton says one area that needs improvement is the amount of trailer space allotted to cattle.
“There is some bruising occurring in the trailer, and the cattle are a little taller than they used to be. so trailer design really needs to be looked at, and that was the buzz around the NAMI Animal Welfare Symposium that happened in October.”
The Audit examined time and distance traveled, trailer dimensions, and the number of cattle in each load.
Researchers then scored each animal’s mobility with a range of walking off the trailer normally, to an extreme reluctance to move.
I’ll be curious to see how ELogs affect future comparisons