In July, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency renewed its approval of the beef on-farm food safety program, Verified Beef Production (VBP).

This represented the final step in a journey that began in 2005, when the Technical Committee started a rewrite of the original Verified Beef Production program. The idea was to generate a more simplified program that accomplished the same objectives as the original safety program.

If you want to see what the new program looks like, you can get a copy from the Canadian Cattlemen’s or the Ontario Cattlemen’s Associations.

It is also available online at the following website, www.verifiedbeef.org. Look for version 7.7 because that is the most up to date. Have a good look around on the website if you have a chance. It has other management and quality tips too, as well as provincial cattle producer organization addresses, emails, FAQs and helpful forms and page links.

I think the new manual is worth reading, but I am biased because I am part of the Technical Committee that revised the original program.

Most cow-calf producers and almost all feedlots will find they are already doing most of the required and recommended practices. For cow-calf producers, it’s pretty simple: write it down when you treat a cow or a calf.

The most controversial objection that I hear from beef and dairy producers when I talk about either the VBP or CQM programs is regarding the issue of broken needles. No producer ever seems to have had one. Broken needles keep showing up at the consumer level though.

Nobody really knows how common they are, but consumers do in fact find them in their meat, sometimes at the worst times.

I was at a meeting recently where they showed us a picture of the broken needle that a customer at a restaurant had found in his steak the week before.

There is no way to know for sure, but because it’s a prime cut, the steak with the broken needle likely came from a beef rather that a dairy carcass.

When you consider that beef, and steak in particular, is usually the highlight of many restaurant menus, it really makes a negative impact on everyone concerned — producer, packer, restaurant and unhappy diner — when this kind of experience takes place.

Beef and dairy producers need to make sure they are part of the solution to this problem. Both the CQM and VBP programs require producers to record the identification of animal and the details where the injection was being administered when the break occurred. They are also required to pass that information along to the next buyer or to the packer.

Because broken needles are rare, it isn’t really likely that just one system will prevent all broken needles from reaching consumers. There will need to be additional preventive steps.

Using detectable needles is one other step, but this only works if the packer uses equipment that can actually detect the needles. So far, packers seem pretty motivated to deal with this problem.

One final comment about the VBP program. Beef producers often ask me if being validated on VBP will increase the value they get for their calves. That is always a tough question to answer because there are so many factors that influence what price they get for their calves. Being on VBP sure won’t hurt. Age verifying is another good place to start showing the value of your calves.