BILLINGS — Beef Quality Assurance (BQA) is a national program that raises consumer confidence by offering proper management techniques and a commitment to quality within every segment of the beef industry - and it all starts with industry stakeholders such as ranchers.
“BQA is an old program and has been around for quite a number of years now,” said Bill Pelton, Montana BQA Coordinator from Absarokee. “Basically, it's just being able to handle and deal with cattle in a humane and respectful manner. It's actually the right thing to do. It's important because it reduces stress in the cattle and reduce stress is increased revenue.”
He continued, “As interest in BQA continues to grow, he says, they’re offering several webinars this fall starting in October.”
“We have two virtual webinars planned for the first and third Wednesday of October,” said Pelton. “The first one will be October 6th. We have guest speakers that participate in the webinars and give some great presentations about topics that are really important to the cattle producer and also to the consumer.”
He says the BQA webinars are free and will take place in October, November, and December, and getting signed up is easy. “They can go to www.billpelton.com and these events are listed on the main calendar,” said Pelton. “If they'll click on that event, there's a place where they can sign up. It's free and then they can sign up in advance. Actually, we would appreciate that so when the webinar starts, all they've got to do is click and enter in.”
He says producers who implement BQA management practices notice an obvious difference in their cattle’s behavior and response.
“There's actually just four things,” said Pelton. “These cattle want to see you; they want to go around you; they want to be with other cattle, and they can only process one main thought at a time. And I can talk an hour about just those four points. So, if you can get that figured out when you're working cattle and have a meeting before the work rather than a beer after the work, you can reduce a lot of stress in the cow herd.”
Basically, Beef Quality Assurance can be described as this: thoughtful, responsible cattle management. For more information, click here to visit the Beef Quality Assurance website.
