The phrase “You can’t raise cattle if you shoot the bull” is a double entendre with both metaphorical and very literal meanings. The first means that nothing gets done if you just stand around yapping. The second costs the beef industry millions of dollars annually.

“Foreign material in cattle – why are we discussing this now?” asked Dr. Trent Schwartz of the Department of Agricultural Sciences at West Texas A&M. He, along with Pat Mies, vice president FSQA Fresh Meats at Tyson Foods, tackled this topic at the recent CattleCon in San Antonio.

Beef carcasses and meat are very thoroughly inspected as they’re being slaughtered and any foreign material is noted. Schwartz said the number one material still being found is buckshot, and it’s most likely coming from old school cattle gathering techniques, hunting and criminal mischief.

Many of these materials are being found in the beef round, beef chuck and in the compartments of the stomach, so some of it is also being ingested.

This is a big enough issue that the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) is leading a study focusing on detection techniques for foreign material in live animals, as well as promoting producer education and improved detection methods.

According to USDA’s Food Safety & Inspection Service (FSIS), meat products that are contaminated with foreign material are adulterated under the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA) regardless of the physical characteristics of the material (shape, size, hardness, etc.).

“The USDA rule used to allow anything under 7 mm or over 25 mm – otherwise the meat was considered ‘adulterated,’” Mies explained.

A section of the FMIA requires establishments to notify their District Office within 24 hours of determining that an adulterated or misbranded product has been received by or shipped from the establishment into commerce (unless it is a sister establishment).

Mies said an enormous chicken recall led to the change in not allowing any foreign materials specifically because that chicken was being used in elementary schools.

“We have changed our philosophy in the meat industry,” he said. A foreign material in one carcass used to be considered a fluke. Now the idea is if you find one BB, there’s probably more. “We need to look bigger … by looking at lots versus individuals,” he added.

But bigger pictures mean much bigger problems. How much meat is actually wasted because of foreign materials?

Say the average carcass weight is 940 lbs. and about 25% of that yield goes to ground beef – that’s 235 lbs. If more than one BB is identified in any of the ground beef from a lot, the source of that material – plus the one before it, plus the one after it – is discarded, which can affect up to 12,000 lbs. Mies said a multiple BB event impacts about 51 head of cattle.

In recent history, there has been an average of 112 BB events per grinder per year. That impacts 5,712 head each year. Of the 67 large facilities surveyed, that equates to 382,704 head of beef cattle each year for a total loss of 89, 935,440 lbs. annually.

“‘Shotgun management’ is causing most of the buckshot issues,” Mies said. That’s simply using a firearm to encourage cattle to move (either your own, around your property, or your neighbor’s, who are where they aren’t supposed to be). Some of that buckshot inevitably ends up in animals – or falls to the ground and ends up being grazed along with grass.

And this isn’t a “Wild West” issue either. Notably, some of these BB events were found in Pennsylvania and Virginia plants.

It’s a method of cattle management that needs to end, according to Schwartz and Mies.

“Be ambassadors,” Mies urged cattlemen. “Talk about shotgun management and how it has no place in our industry. One bad issue goes viral on social media and consumers lose trust in our industry.”

by Courtney Llewellyn