South Dakota Certified Beef
Rounds: State Could Add Value to It's Beef

Brookings Register - March 18, 2005
By Jill Fier

More than 200 people gathered at the 2005 Value-Added Conference at the Brookings Inn Thursday to listen to agriculture and business experts talk about ways to increase the value of farming in the state.
 
 And the featured presenter at the conference this year was Gov. Mike Rounds, who talked about adding value to one of South Dakota’s biggest industries — beef.
 Rounds compared South Dakota and the beef industry to other states that have added value to their own commodities.
 
 “You think about Maine, and you think about Maine lobsters. You think about Florida, and you think about oranges.”
 
 Rounds said there was a time when Florida orange growers sold their oranges to a separate producer and were only paid commodity price for their oranges. “But some of them stayed there and were processed and the value was added, and juice was produced in a number of different varieties, and it was worth a whole lot more money.”
 
 Rounds wants people around the world to recognize a label for SOUTH DAKOTA CERTIFIED™ Beef as easily as they would with commodities like Florida oranges. “They figured something out. They were adding value to a commodity product.” Rounds said the key to adding value to our commodities is by promoting the SOUTH DAKOTA CERTIFIED™ Beef program. “We’re committed to raising the standards of beef production in this state and making sure that consumers all over the world know exactly what we’re doing. The fact is that we truly have the potential here of growing, possibly processing 3.8 million head of cattle each year. The key word here is potential. Right now we export 1.4 million head of cattle to other states. And guess what, they also take the profit out of the state with them.” He added that the program could also create new jobs and wealth for the state. “If we could just feed our own livestock within our state, we would create 10,000 new jobs. We would create over $600 million in new wealth every single year. That’s too much to pass up. That’s too much opportunity not to feed our livestock within our state and not to process our livestock within our state.”
 
 The ultimate goal of SOUTH DAKOTA CERTIFIED™ beef, and this is branding, is to keep the process here within our state, Rounds said. This will be accomplished by incorporating a set of standards, used on a voluntary basis, that will assure quality and consistency to consumers.
 “We’ll use an electronic animal identification system to assure traceability from the spot where that livestock was born, to the area where it’s fed, to the location where it’s processed and finally to the meat shelf. We will market this product throughout the world.” There are only 50 processors in the state today, and just 10 of those are federally licensed. That’s not enough, he said.  “My commitment to you is that we will work with the local processors to help them get into the program, to help them meet the program requirements and to offer all of the opportunities we can for the creation of private processing plants within our state. We want you to be on board as well.”
 
 Rounds wants beef from our state to be a household brand name, like Kleenex instead of tissue or Band-Aids instead of bandages. “We want this to be the product people talk about when they talk about a premium piece of meat.”