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Beef Quality Assurance Objective

The History of Beef Quality Assurance

Consumers want and deserve safe food. Because of concerns about increased government regulation and loss of modern production tools cattlemen began, in 1980, to investigate ways to ensure that their production practices were safe and that those practices would pass scrutiny by the consumer.

In 1982 the United States Department of Agriculture-Food Safety Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS) began working with the beef industry in the United States to develop the Pre-harvest Beef Safety Production Program. Not wanting any additional governmental regulatory programs, the beef industry adopted the term Beef Quality Assurance.

Involvement with the Beef Quality Assurance program provides cattlemen an important voluntary practice that will help to avoid additional government regulation. USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service has commended the National BQA Program. Currently 40 states – representing more than 90 percent of the United States beef production – are involved in the voluntary program. Additionally, 13 states have developed or are in the process of developing producer certification and verification programs to “step up” the BQA educational initiative.

Regulating ourselves has proven to be very successful and will continue to allow industry flexibility needed to produce safe and wholesome food in an economical manner. next page

• page 1 - Beef Quality Assurance Objective...
• page 2 - The History of Beef Quality Assurance...
• page 3 - Quality Concerns According to Packers and End-Users...
• page 4 - Quality Challenges...
• page 5 - Management Tactics...

For more information on Beef Quality Assurance, contact the Feed Division directly.