Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays is visiting with Vice Chair of the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board, Jimmy Taylor, who is also on the board of directors at the U.S. Meat Export Federation, finishing up his three-year term. Taylor ranches in Roger Mills County near Cheyenne, Oklahoma.
“The COVID period was not business as usual,” Taylor said.
Taylor commended Dan Halstrom and his staff for doing a remarkable job getting U.S. beef into the different markets around the world.
“They have 19 offices in around 80 different countries and just do a really good job getting the word out, getting people educated on the difference between the beef they are used to, and the grain fed U.S beef,” Taylor said. “Quality is something they are not used to, and it takes a little bit of time to get people used to eating that, but once they acquire that taste, they love it.”
Variety meats, Taylor said, is a valuable market internationally because many of those meats could not be marketed in the U.S.
“Last year we did, in dollars, 10.576 billion dollars, blew away the previous record and that is a new record,” Taylor said. “The beef variety meats made up about a billion dollars of that.”
Taylor said things like tongues, livers, and tripe do not sell well in the U.S. but being able to sell them so successfully in other countries adds to the value of fed cattle.
“I think the number last year was 470 dollars the exports added to a fed steer and beef variety meats is a big part of that,” Taylor said.
One good thing that came out of the pandemic, Taylor said, was the ability to market products in a different way.
“E-commerce became a big part of the marketing programs because you just couldn’t get out during that pandemic,” Taylor said.
Taylor said USMEF is one of the nine contractors that the Cattlemen’s Beef Board awarded dollars for projects.
“I believe this year, they are going to receive 8.2 million dollars out of the 38.5 million that we awarded to different contractors,” Taylor said. “They do such great work, and I think it is very important moving into the future. 96 percent of the world’s population lives outside of the United States.”
With states moving toward making their own rules and regulations, Taylor said that will play a large part in the future as far as red meat sales.
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