AgMRC-Developed Materials

• Quality Assurance "Down Under": Market Access and Product Differentiation, Midwest Agribusiness Trade Research and Information Center (MATRIC), Iowa State University - This paper gives an overview of the beef systems in Australia and New Zealand, where the majority of beef produced is exported.
• Quality Management and Information Transmission in Cattle Markets: A Case Study of the Chariton Valley Beef Alliance, Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD), Iowa State University.
• Reputation, Quality Observability, and the Choice of Quality Assurance Systems, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD), Iowa State University, 2004 - A repeated purchases model is developed to explore the fundamental economic factors that lie behind the choice of different quality assurance systems and their associated degrees of stringency by firms.
• Why Can't U.S. Beef Compete in the European Union?, Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD), Iowa State University, 2002 - In this paper, a short overview of current U.S. trade flows with the European Union is presented, followed by an estimate of the additional costs of producing beef for that market. Then, given that exports to the European Union are so low and the costs of producing, processing, and shipping are so high, the paper discusses where producers are marketing their non-treated cattle and beef and whether they are receiving an adequate premium to cover their additional costs.

Other Information

• Traceability in the U.S. Food Supply, Briefing Room, Economic Research Service, USDA.
• Traceability in the U.S. Food Supply: Dead End or Superhighway?, Choices magazine, 2003. 
• Traceability in the U.S. Grain and Plant Protein Feed Ingredient Industries, Kansas State University, 2002.
• Supply Chains, Quality Assurance and Traceability using ISO 9000-2000 in Agriculture, CIRAS, Iowa State University, 2003.
• Willing and Waiting, Beef magazine, 2006 - Explains that source and age verification of beef cattle is not yet required and not yet profitable but also predicts that export markets will require verification (specific ongoing documentation and third-party audits to ensure claims made by a system are valid) in the future, and thus, will command greater value returns.

 Links checked February 2008.