AGF President Tom Boyer Attends NIAA Conference
on Jul 25 in NewsletterNIAA Meeting – San Antonio
Consumers’ Stake in Today’s Food Production
AGF again received good reviews from involvement in this meeting. Several new contacts were made and our involvement in a council has been requested.
The meeting centered on feeding the world safely today as well as in 2050 when we will need to double food production from 2010. Dr. Robert Southgate from Ohio State University indicated world population growth has moved from 2.5 B in 1950 to 6 B in 2000 and is projected to be 9 B in 2050. Historically food and crop production has increased faster than the population growth so there has been no problem. Now the problem starts to become more dire as there is very little increase in crop land acreage available, leaving the increases to come through production per acre. Competing for acreage currently are biofuels and crops for livestock and human consumption. Water will become a major limiting factor in production increases.
The Sheep and Goat Session included presentations from Kirk Braedon, Angelo State University on the current lamb industry and lamb consumption. Lamb will need to be made available in table ready packaging to increase per capita consumption and utilization of lower quality cuts is imperative to provide maximum consumption in main stream America. The new consumer is not averse to Lamb as they have grown up in a home where lamb was not consumed and they are looking for a new red meat. Both Lamb and Goat provide good opportunity for this consumer. Currently 37% of lamb consumed is channeled through the Food Service Industry. Other presentations included Food Safety by Loree Branham of Angelo State University regarding the importance of keeping lamb and goat meat safe and free from food borne illness problems associated with some other food products. Dr. Joe Garrett talked about the Scrapie Program and the good progress that has been made in reducing the disease. The current plan is for complete eradication in 2017. The Small Ruminant Business meeting followed where we talked about the critical need to keep Scrapie Disease funding in place through 2017 in order to not lose the gains resulting from the millions of dollars of research and program administration expended to this point. A resolution was passed reflecting this serious need.
I received a call from Allan Huddleston with APHIS right after this meeting indicating the recent budget resolution will eliminate a portion of the Scrapie Budget resulting in the need to either eliminate the Complete Monitored Level of the Volunteer Program or the movement of the annual inspection from the Federal and State levels to the private level with the producer covering this annual expense. It may well be that both will result as the budget cuts continue to be made.
Other presentations included Animal Welfare and Carbon Footprint issues for the future. Presenters included Charlie Arnot with the Center for Food Integrity [Great Presenter], Rod Smith from Feedstuffs Magazine [Investigations of HSUS Investigations – another great presentation] and Carrie Lee [Anchor FiOS1 News, Long Island, New York] She gave a very interesting presentation including interviews with New York Consumers on the Street who have zero understanding as to where their food comes from. There were numerous other speakers and breakout sessions covering a variety of issues related to Food Safety, Animal Welfare, Emerging Diseases, Animal ID, Traceability, FMD Outbreak Potential, Elements of a Stable Food Supply.
Contacts made included Dr Lenard Bull – Len was instrumental in early efforts to start a national goat industry organization. We called an exploratory meeting a decade ago that Len hosted at the University of North Carolina. We called a second meeting in Dallas with such poor attendance that we abandoned the effort. We did not have the right folks on the team. Dr. Bull has strong interest in seeing that we are successful. Other contacts included Cindy Wolf DVM that many of you know. She is a leading sheep and goat vet in Minnesota. Travis Hoffman is a sheep producer who works at Colorado State University who has interest in assisting us where he can. Paul Rodgers is also a good advocate for both sheep and goats and related issues.
This venue is a great channel for interaction with other livestock groups and to get our message out to the animal production sector. This is a meeting we should continue to support and attend.
