Beef Genetics Education Team Announces National Essay Contest: “What does it mean to be a beef breeder in the 21st century?”

Youth participating in 4-H, FFA, or junior beef breed organizations are encouraged to compete in a national essay contest. Essays should respond to the prompt “What does it mean to be a beef breeder in the 21st century?”

The winning essay will be published in one of BEEF magazine’s online newsletters (e.g. BEEF Daily or BEEF Cow-Calf Weekly). The 2nd through 5th place essays will be published on A Steak in Genomics blog. We will award $500 for first, $300 for second, and $200 for third place in the contest. The first place winner will also receive 50 GeneMax Focus or PredicGEN tests.
Essays will be judged by beef genetics extension specialists, breed association staff, and trade publication staff.

Essays will be judged on their ability to encourage best practices and technology adoption by describing:
  • Trust and effectiveness of beef breeding best practices and technologies.
  • Simplicity of using technology.
  • The profit and sustainability outcomes of using best practices and technology.


Essays are required to be at least 600 words long but not longer than 3,000 words. Please submit contest entries at https://missouri.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_9YwBWK2WvM7Tdsh. Entries are due February 15, 2017.


Thanks to our essay sponsors BEEF magazine, Zoetis, and GeneSeek.

This educational program and essay contest are part of the "Identifying Local Adaptation and Creating Region-Specific Genomic Predictions in Beef Cattle" funded by the USDA-NIFA, Grant No. 2016-68004-24827.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

EPDs 101: Use Information to Improve Your Herd

Image
Jared E. Decker
Associate Professor, Division of Animal Sciences, University of Missouri

Reprinted with permission from The Cattlemen and Santa Gertrudis Breeders International.

Can we be frank for a minute? It is quite simple: EPDs work. When we use EPDs to make selection decisions (which bulls to buy, which females to keep and cull), the performance of our herd improves. Let’s discuss why EPDs work, how they can be used, and pitfalls to avoid. Defining EPDEPD stands for Expected Progeny Difference. “Expected” in this context is a loaded word. We use it here the way a statistician would use it. Expected means we are describing a prediction of the future. Expected also means we are discussing an average, not a single observation. What is the average that we are predicting with EPDs? We are predicting the average progeny, or the average of an animal’s calf crop. Finally, when we are discussing EPDs we are discussing differences. Either the difference between two animals or the difference b…
Read more

Bob Hough Comments on Changes at Breed Associations

Bob Hough recently posted the following comment on Facebook (posted with his permission):
Early in my career at a breed association, the much beloved American Angus breed executive told me that the secret to success running a breed association was to have a top junior program, keep the books straight, and make sure the numbers (EPDs) don't change. This philosophy meant Angus valued stability in their genetic predictions over keeping them up-to-date with the latest science. The Angus Association also marketed extremely effectively the infallibility of their EPDs because of the size of their database. I will start with the later. Yes, a database needs certain critical mass to make sure the animals are tied, but that can be achieved in a modest size database. After that, data quality far and away outweighs data quantity in assuring the most precise and reliable EPDs possible. On the former point, Angus breeders are simply not use to change. This is not the case in most breed associati…
Read more

Sustainability and beef: Beyond the headlines and towards the facts

Dr. Sara Place
Senior Director, Sustainable Beef Production Research, NCBA
Presentation at Mountaineer Cattlemen's College

Headlines are largely negative regarding beef and sustainability. Increased questions about beef's environmental impacts, animal welfare, and health/nutrition.

Many companies are using these concerns to market their products.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation regarding beef's impact.

Sustainability is a complex topic influencing environmental, social, and economic issues. Most of beef's opponents focus on environmental impact.
It is true that beef tends to have a larger biological impact, because they are ruminants and produce gas. They also have later maturity compared to other livestock species. However, there is a lot of variability across the world in terms of beef's environmental impact. United States beef production has some of the lowest environmental impacts of cattle production across the world.

Americans eat the same amoun…
Read more