CALF_News_April_May_2020

28 CALF News • April | May 2020 • www.calfnews.net Y our calves have had their protocol of shots, been fully processed and weaned over 45 days. They’re among the best your herd has ever seen. Trouble is, if they don’t have third-party verification to guarantee your precise production system, they may not receive the pre- miums they deserve from feedyards or packers selling to stringent markets. Third-party verification (TPV) has been around since the 1990s as a service to help producers and feeders assure buyers that beef is all natural, source verified, etc. When the BSE scare hit in 2003, TPV escalated. More foreign buyers wanted to know the origin of beef, pork and poultry. Likely, the leading TPV company is IMI Global, which has clients rang- ing from individual ranches to large feedyards, packers and food companies. Leann Saunders, IMI president, spoke during this winter’s Southwest Beef Symposium in Amarillo. The symposium is geared toward cow- calf and stocker operators and feeders in New Mexico and Texas. But many topics like TPV are important for all producers. Saunders said TPV programs enable cow-calf producers, backgrounders, stocker operators and finishers to meet specific export or private-brand label requirements related to live animal pro- duction practices and procedures. “We try to help you connect with your customers,” she said, adding that more consumers have a “trust-but-verify” attitude toward beef and other food pur- chases. IMI has developed several TPV programs to meet that trust. Beef Passport premiums IMI’s Beef Passport program enables producers to use the various TPV programs. Depending on which IMI beef verification is used, premiums to producers can range from about $2 to $8 per hundredweight. “Beef Passport uses a confidential, third-party, private-industry database to contain all information captured,” Saun- ders said.“This system meets animal disease traceability (ADT) requirements and is an easy tie-in with voluntary verification programs. It maintains and ensures export verification compliance.” The TPV programs include: Source and Age Verification (SAV), which has these requirements:  Cattle must have been born and raised on your operation.  Calving records must be kept showing the first and last calf born for each season, and records must be submitted for verification.  Head count support must be available to show cow numbers that meet or exceed the number of head to enroll (i.e., pregnancy- check numbers, inventories/tallies, vaccine receipts).  EID tags must be applied at the ranch of origin prior to cattle shipping.  An onsite audit is not required but an offsite audit is. Non-Hormone Treated Cattle (NHTC) - NHTC requirements are tighter. They include SAV requirements plus:  Implanted or fed hormone growth promotants of any kind are not allowed in marketed animals.  Cattle must move through NHTC locations approved for the cattle to maintain the NHTC claims. This includes sale barns and backgrounders.  An onsite audit prior to ship- ping and/or marketing in a sale is required. Verified Natural Beef (VNB) cattle can receive the VNB verification if they are SAV and NHTC plus these requirements:  Cattle can never receive beta-agonists (Optaflexx ® ), ionophores (Rumensin ® or BOVATEC®), antibiotics (inject- able, fed or topical), animal byprod- By Larry Stalcup Contributing Editor If Your Cattle Don't Have It, Maybe It's Time Third-Party Verification Do your high-quality cattle need a beef passport? Southwest Beef Symposium speaker Leann Saunders, IMI Global president, outlines various third-party verification programs that can add value to your cattle.