At its Sept. 13-14 meeting in Denver, the Cattlemen’s Beef Board (CBB) Operating Committee approved its FY17 Plan of Work, which will include investing about $40.7 million into development and implementation of programs of beef promotion, research, consumer information, industry information, foreign marketing and producer communications.

The 2017 fiscal budget decreased by more than 9 percent from FY16’s $44.8 million budget. The drop forced the Operating Committee to cut more than $5 million from proposed programs, according to a press release from the CBB.

“This was one of the most challenging years ever, in terms of the gap between the value of proposals before us and the budget we had to invest,” said Beef Board and Operating Committee Chairman Anne Anderson, a Texas rancher. “I’m extremely proud of how all committee members worked together through this extremely difficult situation to make the best possible decisions about how to invest our checkoff dollars in the coming year.”

The committee worked together to make the most of the 2017 budget.

“There were so many great proposals, but not nearly enough money to fund them,” Anderson said, “so we had to make some pretty substantial cuts, and I can’t overemphasize how well the committee members worked together to do what we had to do to meet budget requirements. I feel confident that the plan of work we created for fiscal 2017 will put us in a position to continue increasing consumer confidence in and preference for beef.”

The approved proposals from the national beef organizations for the FY17 budget include:

  • National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (four proposals for $27.5 million)
  • U.S. Meat Export Federation, a subcontractor to NCBA (one proposal for $7.2 million)
  • Cattlemen’s Beef Board (one proposal for $1.5 million)
  • North American Meat Institute (three proposals for $860,000)
  • Meat Import Council of America (one proposal for $350,800)
  • American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture (one proposal for $370,178)
  • National Livestock Producers Association (one proposal for $66,500).

The FY17 Plan of Work for the CBB budget includes:

  • $8.1 million for promotion programs, including continuation of the checkoff’s consumer digital advertising program, as well as veal promotion.
  • $9.5 million for research programs, focusing on a variety of critical issues, including pre- and post-harvest beef safety research, product quality research, human nutrition research and scientific affairs, market research and beef and culinary innovations.
  • $7.6 million for consumer information programs, including a Northeast public relations initiative, national consumer public relations, including, nutrition-influencer relations, and work with primary- and secondary-school curriculum directors nationwide to get accurate information about the beef industry into classrooms of today’s youth.
  • $3.9 million for industry information programs, comprising dissemination of accurate information about the beef industry to counter misinformation from anti-beef groups and others, as well as funding for checkoff participation in a fifth annual national industrywide symposium focused on discussion and dissemination of information about antibiotic use.
  • $7.2 million for foreign marketing and education in some 80 countries in the following: ASEAN region; Caribbean; Central America/Dominican Republic; China/Hong Kong; Europe; Japan; Korea; Mexico; Middle East; Russia/Greater Russian Region; South America; Taiwan; and new markets.
  • $1.5 million for producer communications, which includes investor outreach using national communications and direct communications to producers and importers about checkoff results; as well as development and utilization of information conduits, such as auction markets; maintenance of a seamless partnership with state beef council producer-communication efforts; and producer attitude research to determine producer attitudes about and desires of their checkoff program.