CALF_News_April_May_2018

26 CALF News • April | May 2018 • www.calfnews.net T he Beef Improvement Federa- tion (BIF) is celebrating 50 years this year. Themed “Elevating the Industry,” the Annual Meeting and Research Symposium is poised not only to celebrate the last 50 years, but launch into the next 50. BIF was officially founded in 1968, but the formation began the previous January during a meeting at National Western Stock Show. At that time, a group of producers and researchers – spearheaded by Colorado cattle producer, lawyer and performance evaluation advocate Ferry Carpenter and Frank Baker, the federal Extension livestock specialist in 1967 – met with the goal to move the cattle industry from its historical basis of visual appraisal to one of evaluation based on performance. Thus began a very powerful and intentional “performance movement” in the cattle industry that continues and thrives today. Fifty years later, the 2018 BIF Annual Meeting and Symposium will return to Colorado, June 20-23 at the Embassy Suites Convention Center in Loveland. Each year, the symposium focuses on research, innovation and education for producers and scientists alike on current issues facing the beef cattle industry “to connect science and industry to improve beef cattle genetics.” BIF’s three-leaf- clover logo symbolizes the link between industry, Extension and research. The beginnings In the late ‘60s and ‘70s when BIF was formed, the cattle industry was experi- encing a great deal of change with the influx of Continental breeds, and the implementation of artificial insemina- tion and crossbreeding. Many states had Beef Cattle Improvement Associations (BCIA) but no standard procedures or measurements. At the same time, land- grant universities were conducting more research on genetics and how genetic evaluation could improve cattle herds. The germplasm research being conducted at the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center would provide incentive and data to create and formulate genetic evaluation, and other data collected by producers and breed associations would add to that. Creating and utilizing new evaluation methods based on performance versus visual appraisal was not an easy road. The first step was to standardize perfor- mance testing, including the terminology, the actual methods of measurement and the education as to what the information meant. Over the years, there were a few growing pains and disagreements, but the common goal prevailed. Steve Radakovich of Radakovich Cattle Company, Earlham, Iowa, was president of BIF in 1983-1984 when BIF was still young and evolving. “Back then we were a bit of a divided camp. We had one group who were the ‘weigh and pray’ folks,” Radakovich says. “They would stand by the scales and pray that the animal weighed more than he did the time before. Then there was the systems group, which I was a part of, who asked questions such as ‘Is bigger really better?’ “The weigh and pray guys thought that the systems guys were nuts, and these two approaches led to some pretty good arguments.” At that time, some were leaning heav- ily toward advancing methodology and figuring out how to standardize data collection and utilization, which then led to discussion about the direction of the seedstock industry. During this critical time in the industry, BIF facilitated this direction through the exchange of ideas. Mark Enns, Ph.D., professor of animal breeding and genetics at Colo- rado State University and organizer of the 2018 BIF Symposium, also got his first exposure to BIF as a graduate student in the ‘80s.“BIF helped create the unified vision for genetic improve- ment throughout the beef industry and established common ground for all the breed associations and all the coopera- tive breed improvement groups to work under,” Enns says.“We cannot discount the brilliant minds who came up with the idea for BIF and recognized the need for it.” Throughout the years, BIF has made significant contributions to the beef industry, particularly the seedstock sector.“BIF has allowed the smaller, family seedstock producer to compete on the same playing field with the larger seedstock producer,” Radakovich says. “BIF standardized evaluation so that the smaller operators could utilize the methodology, could pursue an objective selection process and could compete with larger operations. Without the standard methodology, they would not have access to those tools.” Today’s challenges and beyond Fifty years later, genetic evaluation now includes genomics, with gene mapping and epigenetics as the next cutting-edge technologies. Today’s cattle industry is also faced with a great many issues, including animal welfare, the environment, diet and health, and food safety, all of which can be affected by genetics in some part. According to Radakovich, genetics can have a big effect on issues for the future, particularly in adapting cattle to differ- ent climates and environments all over the world as well as the United States. Some are studying the grazing habits of different biological types of cattle, which appear to have the same heritability as weaning weight. BIF Celebrates 50 Years By Lisa Bard Contributing Editor