Who do you think you are?

Who do you think you are?

Straight from the hip with Brenda Schoepp

The business of agriculture is getting it from all sides. Some folks liken farmers, ranchers and cattle feeders to monsters who are destroying the land and even more so the air. Society has a way of defining those involved in food production by what they do and not who they are. When someone asks us […] Read more

Two-month-old calves were numbered to identify them as they were sampled for blood and weighed through the chute.

Pain control in cattle remains a complex issue

The age of the animal is often a factor when considering pain mitigating options

When it comes to pain mitigation practices for her cattle operation, Cecilie Fleming believes it’s the right thing to do. It’s also proven to be practical and cost-effective, factors that many beef producers consider when deciding whether to implement pain control. Fleming, who raises purebred Angus, Simmental and Charolais cattle with her family at Fleming […] Read more


Curt Pate demonstrates his pressuring technique with cattle in the chute.

Effective stockmanship adds to the bottom line

... and it’s the right thing to do

For Curt Pate, handling cattle in an effective manner is vital to a stockman’s success. “What we really need to think about are what the effects of our cattle handling are doing to the performance of our cattle,” he said during the 2018 Western Canada Feedlot Management School in Regina. Pate, who came into the […] Read more

Food consumers increasingly want to know how their food is produced, how animals are cared for, and want guarantees that beef is safe and has been produced in a sustainable way.

Tyson leads transparency push on beef production

Prime Cuts with Steve Kay

Consumers in the U.S. and Canada increasingly want to know how their food is produced. As far as beef is concerned, they want to know how animals are cared for, they want guarantees that beef is safe and that it has been produced in an environmentally sustainable way. Until now, the beef industries in both […] Read more


A recent study for one of the world’s largest beef companies found respondents indicate that an animal’s diet is directly related to food safety.

Carbon cut on beef

Straight from the hip with Brenda Schoepp

Will consumers want carbon-neutral and certified cared for beef? Will they determine those to be traits of safe food? Australia has set a goal of carbon-neutral meat production by the year 2030. The focus will be on trees and grasses that cover and sequester carbon for the nation’s 28 million head of cattle, 70.9 million […] Read more

An AAFC study found that while most unfit animals were being dealt with properly, there was room for improvement in terms of assessing cattle prior to transport.

Better tools needed to keep unfit cattle off the truck

Research: News Roundup from the August 2018 issue of Canadian Cattlemen

Researchers have found that improving guidelines for identifying compromised and unfit cattle prior to transport could help lower the number of these animals being transported. A study by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) on the prevalence of compromised and unfit cattle coming into Alberta auction markets and abattoirs has found that while most of these […] Read more



Steve Eby: “If I could tell the public one thing, it’s that we take transport very seriously.”

Cross Canada cattle transport — the journey and the destination count

Livestock transport is one subject for discussion at the Canadian Beef Industry Conference next week

With hundreds of thousands of beef cattle being transported across Canada each year, welfare during transport is a hot topic among producers, scientists, and society. Discussions around potential regulation changes regarding the amount of time cattle are on a truck, and how many hours cattle are transported without feed and water, have people all along […] Read more


The Olds Technical Access Centre aims to spark innovations that improve livestock production.

A Technical Access Centre for livestock production

Key industry issues focus on production efficiency, animal health and welfare and environmental sustainability

The Canadian government has been setting up a number of Technical Access Centre (TAC) research programs to aid several industrial sectors. The first TACs were created in 2011 as part of the College and Community Innovation Program. In September 2017, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) announced development of a series […] Read more

The latest research into cattle transport looked at the effects of rest stop duration on calves.

Are your cattle fit to travel?

Transport: News Roundup from the January 2018 issue of Canadian Cattlemen

When it comes to culling and marketing cattle, are your animals fit to travel? The beef industry isn’t doing too bad but the dairy industry needs to pull up its socks. Overall there is room for improvement in all sectors of the cattle industry, says Melissa Moggy, a veterinarian and researcher with Alberta Farm Animal […] Read more