Beef Ambassador

You would be proud to know that I received a 99% on my sales presentation today. What did I sell???? BEEF OF CORSE! I asked about beef recipes but then realized I had a class right before my presentation time so I didn’t have any prep time for a steak. Instead I sold him the convenient beef jerky.

Now for a serious note. I am in Environmental Ethics right now and our assignment last week really opened my eyes to how my peers view the livestock industry. Our question was do you think eating meat is ethical? We should all be proud to know that all fourteen group members said that they believe eating meat is ethical. That means that they do trust our industry to a certain degree. But even though they all believe eating meat is ethical some had some pretty strong opinions about how the animals are raised.

People are confused about the industry

The main comments that disturbed me were “Watching any behind the scenes footage from a cattle ranch or a chicken coop you can see the absolute filth and disgust these animals live in.” “Animals are provided with the bare minimum to survive” and ” I am fine with local farms but I have no tolerance for the industrial farming where the meat is raised and slaughtered in bulk.”

I responded to these statements letting them know that we try to keep our animals in clean environments and keep them healthy and happy to make sure that they are getting the best product possible. I also debunked the fact that animals are provided the bare minimum to survive, we as farmers need our animals to be healthy when they go to harvest otherwise we won’t have enough product to stay a farmer  for very long. I also told them that we hate seeing the footage of animal abuse too, and might get even more upset than they do because they are giving our livelihood a bad name.  No animal should be harmed or made to suffer, as farmers we believe that to be very important. And for the last one, there are huge family owned farms, a lot of our consumers believe that if there is concrete or technology that the farm must be factory owned. But that is not true because we need these new ideas and innovations to be an efficient industry that can produce protein for the world.

I tried to respond to their concerns calmly and even invited them to my farm to show them that we care for our animals. It is our job as beef producers to spread the positive views of animal agriculture and let them know that we do not accept animal abuse in our industry and the people that are caught are being punished and we are ok with that. I want my classmates to say it is ethical to eat meat and not have any doubt in their mind when they go to the meat counter at their grocery store. We need to spread the word that we love our animals and want meat to be as safe as possible for the consumer.

The National Beef Ambassador Team has been having a great time in Nashville at the Cattle Industry Convention! We have learned so much and there is plenty more to come. Today we started off bright and early with Cattlemen’s College classes. The group split up and learned new advances in our great industry. One of the classes I went to was the Driving Change-The National Beef Quality Audit. I learned about surveys they have been taking of different segments of the industry, from feeders to retailers. We discussed the different views of the segments and their effect on our product. One statement that really stood out to me was that the different segments that deal directly with consumers believe that a huge strength of the beef industry is Food Safety. 

We also attended the American Cattle Women Membership meeting and got interviewed by Cattlemen to Cattlemen so look for us on RFDTV!!!

The general session was great! There were introductions and welcomes and then we heard from a very entertaining speaker. Marcus Luttrell, a Navy SEAL, has a book titled “Lone Survivor”. He told us about his experiences in combat but still through all that he went through he had an incredible sense of humor and kept everyone on the edge of their seats. It has been a great start to this convention and there is plenty of great information to come! If you are at the conventions and see a sea of red shirts stop us, we would love to interact with more beef enthusiasts!

There is a great new game on the Explore Beef Page! This is titled Cow Chow, Exploring What Cattle Eat. There is a short video exploring some of the concepts behind the cattle feeding program. Then the player is asked to “Get Started”.  The player gets to be either Farmer Jill or Farmer Bill and then the quiz kicks off. There is a short quiz that asks questions about the video that was just played and the happiness of the farmer and the points earned depend on how fast the question is asked and the accuracy of the answer.

Cow Chow

If the player gets a question wrong they are asked to watch a video further explaining the question and then they have a reattempt. This is a great way to learn a little bit more about what goes into the belly of a cow and is done in a fun and encouraging way. Teachers, this is a great activity to do with your class on a Smartboard because it is so interactive! Also State Beef Ambassadors, take advantage of these great tools in your next classroom sessions!

Props to the Explore Beef Team to go above and beyond in telling the beef story. It is great to get the beef story out there in a positive way and put a spin towards a slightly younger generation so they can feel included!

You can find the game at http://www.explorebeef.org/cowchow.aspx

RB

Hi there Beef Friends!

The holidays are over and everybody is getting back in the swing of things. Everybody has their new years resolution to be more proactive, plan ahead, get fit and so many other vague goals. I started classes on Monday and it already seems like I am bogged down with work. The 7 Habits that I learned last week are really coming in handy. I made a weekly plan for myself which mostly consisted of getting together materials for classes and settling into my new home. I have tried to stay on top of tasks and make them quadrant two (effectiveness) tasks so they don’t creep up on me and become quadrant one (necessity) tasks that are urgent and have to consume my attention right away.

Now for the fun part. I need your help in a project that I am working on. I am currently enrolled in Agribusiness Marketing and my first project is a one-on-one sale with my professor. He said that we could choose any product we wanted to make the sale. So what have I chosen to sell him? Beef of course!

So I need your help… I am planning on getting a time slot around lunch and serving my professor a delicious steak sandwich. So I need some awesome recipes for marinating my savory steak! If you have any ideas please comment on my blog. And of course it will be a buttered toasted bun for the bread of the sandwich. Any help would be appreciated and i will keep yall updated on my progress of the project!

RB

Hi There Beef Friends!

The National Beef Ambassador Team along with some enthusiastic State Beef Ambassadors and American Cattle Women Staff are in Denver, Colorado this week. We are participating in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People workshop taught by our very own Sarah Bohnenkamp! Today we went through the foundation section and habits 1 and 2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a book written by Stephen Covey. There are a lot of books that look into being successful in life but the key is to be effective at your current position.

Here is a little review of what we have learned on our first day!

7 Habits

Foundation: Determine your character and let your personality show to others in a positive light. Character is hidden like the roots of a tree and your personality is seen by everyone. There are also stages of maturity that everyone moves through… Dependence is when you are asking what can YOU do for me?… Independence, what can I do for myself?…Interdependence, what can WE do for our team? Follow the See-Do-Get circle. “The results we get in life depend on what we do. What we do in life depends on how we see the world around us.”  How we see things is referred to as a paradigm, it is how we understand and interpret the world. What we do is our behavior and what we get are the results. It is important that we move to different paradigms to give us a better understanding of others views. Within the See-Do-Get circle is a principle which are universal, timeless, objective and work whether or not we understand or value them. Finally we have to determine our production and production capability. Production is the result that we want to accomplish but we have to have the tools to get that result. That is where Production Capability comes in to maintain and enhance the resources that give us the results.

Habit 1: Be Proactive There are four human endowments that we have to be aware of self awareness, imagination, conscience, and independent will. These fall into dealing with responses to stimuluses. It is better to have space between stimulus and response and use proactive behavior instead of crashing stimulus with response using reactive behavior. It is better to have proactive language like “I choose” instead of “I can’t” and “I prefer”. There is also the circle of concern and circle of influence. It is better to have a large circle of influence and continue to make it grow as you push forward in your position. We all have transition people in our lives that allow us to push ourselves harder as we strive to be like them or gain encouragement from them.

Habit 2: Begin With the End in Mind Start with the mental creation before physical creation. There have to be blueprints before a house can be built. Without them there will be a lot of issues to sort out. Create a personal mission statement to live by with a focus on personal goals. It can be as long or as short as you like it just needs to focus on your life.

We are off to a great start! It has been a fantastic day filled with a lot of new information and discussion. Five Habits to go! Read on for more information in blogs to come!

RB

Hey there beef ambassador blog followers! This is the introduction of your southern beef ambassador from the east coast! My name is Rossie Blinson and I am from North Carolina. I am attending North Carolina State University majoring in Agriculture Business Management and minoring in Animal Science.  I am really looking forward to representing the beef industry on the 2012 National Beef Ambassador Team!

I am the third generation cattle breeder and I have been around cattle my whole life. I really enjoy traveling around the country to show my cattle. The beef industry has allowed me to meet great people from around the country and I am so thankful for that opportunity!

I am really interested in the agriculture activist side of the industry. There are so many groups that are against the livestock industry and I will try to keep everyone up to date on the latest news in those activist circles along with other awesome beef information.  Many consumers only hear negative things that groups like the HSUS and PETA promote, but we know the real story and it is our job to tell the truth about our great product, BEEF!