Two sites that have a brief overview:
Virginia Tech overview of 2000 Beef Quality Audit
Texas Beef Quality Producer Program Results of 2000 NBQA
"Alliance" is a buzzword in the cattle industry and one with growing clout.
Here is a 1998 article that gives an overview of alliances and answers the question, "What is an alliance? Click here.
In an article published in January, 2001, Progressive Farmer quoted Michigan's Harlan Ritchie, "More has happened in the beef industry in the last 24 months than in the last 24 years." He further said, "Branded products [often produced by alliances] held 10 to 12% of beef's market share in 1998. By 2002, these will be 25 to 30% of products."
The August 22, 2001, issue of
Beef Magazine had an update on the growth of alliances, suggestions
for choosing an alliance, and characteristics of a successful alliance.
That article has been reprinted
here.
The Maverick Ranch
is just one example of an alliance.
Maverick Ranch's website was chosen as an example because it has excellent
sections on Natural
Beef Facts and Myths and
Beef FAQs.
Beef Magazine has an Alliance Yellow Pages section that has links to many other alliances.
The following was written by Stephen P. Hammack, Professor and Beef Cattle Specialist, Texas A&M Research and Extension Center at Stephenville, TX. It was published in the Beef Cattle Browsing Newsletter, December 21, 2001.
"There is a lot of interest today in composite breeds of cattle. Are composite breeds something new? What is a composite? The most commonly accepted definition of composite is "a population created from at least two existing breeds, designed to retain heterosis in future generations, and maintained like a purebred". For many years, breeds have been created by combining existing breeds and then maintaining them as a breed. Up to now, there has been little if any effort to maintain heterosis in such breeds. That is probably the only new thing about the new composites. Some say new composites are bred with a purpose, to combine the desirable genetic qualities of each breed. It is said that Mark Twain used to tell a story about "a mighty good dog, a composite, not a mongrel". According to Twain a composite was "a dog made up of all the valuable qualities; a mongrel is made up of the rif-raf that's left over". When you combine breeds and then inter-mate you do get the good parts. But you also get the bad parts. The new combination may be superior, but if so it's not because undesirable features were eliminated. The new combination is just a better package. The only way to get the good features without the bad (called complementarity) is with a well-planned terminal cross. And a terminal cross can not reproduce itself, it must be re-created every time."
For more information, the University of Arkansas has a website about composite or synthetic beef cattle. Technically, beef breeds such as Beefmaster, Brangus, Braford, Santa Gertrudis, etc. are composites because they were derived by combining breeds. Most cattlemen today do not think of these "breeds" as composites; they think of composites as the new genetic lines in which have been developed which are not breeds in the sense that they breed true but allow cattlemen to maintain heterosis without having the management problems of maintaining a crossbreeding system. The University of Arkansas site has a good discussion of composites.
Graphic at the top of the page courtesy of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association