John H. Pfeiffer Jr., a fourth-generation Oklahoma farmer and rancher, has been awarded the 2025 recipient of Governor Stitt’s Outstanding Achievement in Agriculture Award and is the 28th inductee into the Oklahoma Agriculture Hall of Fame. Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays caught up with Pfeiffer to hear his story, which was featured in Tuesday’s BeefBuzz. Today, they are discussing the time Pfeiffer spent serving on the American Angus Association’s Board of Directors.
The Pfeiffer’s Angus herd can be traced back to the first Registered Angus bull that John’s great-grandfather bought in 1907, just years after trading $25 and a shotgun for a parcel of Oklahoma land the day after the land run.
Together with his wife, Gaye, Pfeiffer owns and operates Pfeiffer Angus Farms, a purebred Angus cattle operation. Their participation in a 1981 CAB workshop shifted their focus from show-based to performance-based breeding, with Pfeiffer leading advancements in technology like in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer.
Pfeiffer served on the Certified Angus Beef board for five years during his tenure with the American Angus Association. “One year as president, and that was the year that we went over a billion pounds in sales,” he recalled. “That was kind of neat to be president and reach the billion pounds in sales. I knew from the year before we were getting close, and I ran the numbers before the June meeting, and thought, ‘Darn. We are going to be about ten million short.’ So, when we did hit the billion, I was really excited.”
Today, Angus is the gold standard in a lot of ways, including the value-added program and the multitude of technologies embraced within the industry.
Pfeiffer said that the American Angus Association had joined forces with GeneSeek, now known as Neogen Genomics, around the time that he started serving on the board of directors. A year later, it became apparent that Pfeiffer Angus Farms would need to pull genomics on their own herd in order to stay up with the industry. The test cost $75 per head at that time. His wife doubted whether the outcome would be worth the expense.
“It would have been almost eight years later before we really saw any return for it,” he admitted. “When we were finally able to sell the one cow that was worth a whole lot of money, we saw the return, because she was three generations deep with genomic data in her pedigree. That’s why our numbers didn’t change and stayed so good. She is still one of the top cows in the Angus breed today. Those decisions that we made early on were very beneficial and helped to make things a whole lot better.”
He highlighted his confidence in genomic data by sharing that nearly all of his commercial cows also have genomic data on them, now. “Consumers want it, and it’s important that we take care of the consumers,” he emphasized. “If we don’t take care of the consumers, then we aren’t going to be in business for very long.”
He pointed out how much the American Angus Association and Certified Angus Beef are pushing the Beef Quality Assurance Program, and that everyone on this farm is BQA certified and keeps their certification up to date.
“We try to do everything right each and every day,” he said. “Besides creating a quality product, we have to make sure that we take care of things; we’ve got to take care of the environment.”
He believes that the best thing about CAB is that chefs and wholesalers are just as excited about the products as the producers are. “We kind of have this idea that we are the only ones who are really putting forth work, but I guarantee you that some of the chefs and restaurant owners that I’ve seen work harder than I do to make sure that they put out a quality product,” he noted. “If you create a quality product and they can’t get it cooked and served right, then you haven’t accomplished anything. It is all of us together working as a group to make Certified Angus Beef as successful as it has been today.”
You can listen to the entire conversation that Hays had with Pfeiffer by clicking here.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Ag Network and is a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the LISTEN BAR for today’s show and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
