At Palo Duro Feedyard near Gruver, Texas, manager Matt McLennan and his crew administer growth implants on a regular basis. With a carrying capacity of nearly 37,000 cattle, it is imperative everyone is doing their job correctly and efficiently.

If there is one thing Anne Burkholder wants to get across to feedyard visitors, it is to respect and appreciate.

In response to California’s four-year historic drought, on April 1 Governor Jerry Brown announced a mandatory water-use reduction executive order. This is the first time such a mandate has been imposed on residents in the state of California.

The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) thanks West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin for vetoing legislation allowing consumers to obtain unpasteurized milk through herd-shares, or arrangements under which they become part owners of a dairy cow.

Merck Animal Health has released an educational video about cattle shipping and transportation as part of its CreatingConnections program – designed to help producers better understand cattle behavior and use that knowledge to help reduce stress, improve reproduction and foster stronger immune responses.

Many food labels bombard shoppers with various animal welfare claims in addition to the many labels of non-GMO or pasture-raised.

In the last two years, the U.S. beef industry experienced some of the largest recalls on record as Ranch Feeding Corporation announced a recall for 8.7 million pounds of “unwholesome” beef in 2013, and Wolverine Packing Company withdrew 1.8 million pounds of ground beef for E. coli O157:H7 contamination in 2014.

Are we producing the highest-quality cattle ever in the history of this great industry? Well, “ever” is right up there with words like never or best, often subject to debate …

Record prices for cattle became the norm for 2014, to the point producers almost became inured and found it anticlimactic – sort of like hearing about falling gas prices in late 2014.