Beef Quality Assurance Trainings November 2 & 7, 2023
Oct 18, 2023
Several years ago, the beef industry created a voluntary training and certification program called Beef Quality Assurance or BQA. In that program, producers of beef are taught industry standards for producing good quality beef, are tested, and are then issued a certificate of completion. The topics range from keeping feeds safe from contaminates, animal nutrition, to using drugs in a prescribed and safe manner, how to safely move cattle through barns and feedlots, using herbicides safely on pastures, and even worker safety. The program was well received by the industry. There are over 1000 BQA certified people in Indiana alone. Many of the large-scale buyers of beef adopted the BQA as their own and will not purchase beef from those without the BQA certificate. In fact, most of the beef from northern Indiana beef and dairy industry flows through packers with that requirement. Locally, if you sell steers or cull cows or any sort of beef or dairy beef through the auctions, you will be required to have that certification because the auctions sell to packers with a BQA requirement. There are 2 ways to get certified, one is online at www.bqa.org. The other is by attending a meeting. There are two meeting dates where in-person training will be held via a video conference in Indiana: Nov. 2 and Nov. 7, all beginning at 6:30 pm and ending at 9:00 pm. Eastern time.
