Development of Iowa-branded beef products capitalizing on the state’s strong reputation as a high-quality producer of young, tender beef could help open the Japanese market to more U.S. beef exports. That country banned U.S. beef following the December 2004 discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, in an imported animal.

Japan has given signals that it will ease restrictions on U.S. beef coming from animals whose origin can be traced and that are verified to be 20 months or younger at the time of slaughter through a rigid set of standards established in the Beef Export Verification Program managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Services.

Iowa-80 Beef, as the product currently under development is known, should easily satisfy the conditions set by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture for imports of U.S. beef to resume, said John Lawrence, director of the Iowa State University-based Iowa Beef Center, which is collaborating with the Center for Agricultural Development, also headquartered at ISU, on the creation of the Iowa brand. The Iowa-80 Beef project is still in the development phase as the collaborators await USDA approval of process-verified identification systems and the resolution of other issues. The branded meat could be available in selected test markets by mid- to late 2006.

Consumers in Japan already have strong affinity for corn-fed U.S. beef and are eager for imports to resume, Lawrence said. They commonly refer to any corn-fed U.S. beef as “I-80 beef” because Interstate 80 is a recognizable landmark in the Midwest, where beef cattle are fed rations consisting primarily of corn or corn byproducts. The Iowa-80 Beef brand will build on consumers’ association of the Midwest Corn Belt states with high-quality beef, but take it a step further by restricting its production to Iowa. In other words, though corn-fed beef produced in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri may taste and look virtually the same, only Iowa-produced meat can carry the brand.

“We are hopeful about this for Japan, when it does reopen,” Lawrence said.

The Iowa-branded beef will not only meet the Japanese government’s requirements to resume imports, but also exceed them in some instances. For example, Japan has said it would be willing to accept beef from cattle 20 months or younger at the time of slaughter, whereas beef considered for the Iowa-80 brand must be 18 months or younger at slaughter. The meat also must come from an animal whose sire is at least half Angus, a breed known for early maturation and also as “the Butcher’s Breed” because of its consistent flavor, marbling, tenderness and juiciness. Other qualifying standards include the absence of any Brahman blood in both parents because of that breed’s reputation for producing tougher, less juicy meat.

Even if Japan doesn’t lift its ban on U.S. beef exports, Iowa producers stand to increase their often-thin profit margins with a product that responds to U.S. consumers’ food-safety concerns and their willingness to pay a premium price for a worry-free product, Lawrence said.

“That trend is quite real,” he said. “Consumers are more interested in where food comes from than they were a decade ago, and we’re trying to have a fairly elite product that can demand a premium in the marketplace.”

The expected premium price of Iowa-80 Beef will allow producers to “extract a larger margin through branding without increasing the costs, achieving the target of, say, $40,000 additional revenue for living expenses, with fewer animals,” Lawrence said. “That isn’t possible with commodity crops because prices are not differentiated and the only way to increase the profit margin is to cut costs.”

One hurdle will be ensuring an adequate supply of beef cattle bred and fed according to the Iowa-80 Beef standards, Lawrence said.

A handful of beef producers in Southern Iowa may be poised to do that. Chariton Valley Beef LLC is a direct-marketing group within the Chariton Valley Beef Alliance, which helps ranchers from 23 counties in South Central Iowa and North Central Missouri identify value-added marketing opportunities. Ranchers who are part of the limited liability corporation already are supplying a product that meets consumer demands for corn-fed beef from an easily verified source, said Joe Sellers, an ISU Extension livestock specialist in Southern Iowa.

One concern in Sellers’ mind is the availability of a year-round supply of young beef cattle available for slaughter, but an increasing number of producers in Southern Iowa are adjusting their calving schedules so they’ll have calves born in both the spring and the fall.

Farmer- and processor-owned brands are gaining popularity in the United States and abroad in response to consumers’ food-safety concerns. Lawrence thinks Iowa-80 Beef could hold the same potential for the state’s beef producers as Prosciutto di Parma does for hog farmers in the Parma region of Northern Italy. The dry-cured Parma Ham, as it is commonly known, was one of the models the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development studied before proposing the Iowa-80 Beef brand.

The Parma brand is owned by a consortium of ham processors maintaining control over production with regulations mandating that hogs be produced in a small area south of Parma, that only traditional Italian breeds be used and that producers adhere to rigid standards on feeding, including a requirement that pigs fast for 15 hours before slaughter.

For 2004, the consortium reported that production had increased 2.5 percent from the previous year to nearly 9.4 million Parma-branded hams. The value of the hams also increased 2.5 percent, to 830 million euros in 2004. Italian markets absorb 82 percent of the hams against 18 percent exported. Of the 1.5 million hams exported in 2004, 74 percent remained in Europe and 26 percent were shipped overseas.

CARD researchers also studied examples of farmer- or processor-owned brands closer to home, including Vidalia Onions, a Georgia Department of Agriculture trademark verifying that they’re grown only in Vidalia region in Southern Georgia. Farmers authorized by the Georgia Agriculture Department to grow Vidalia Onions have been successful in differentiating their product from other sweet onions, and have developed related markets that boost the economic impact of the crop. Georgia agriculture officials say the Vidalia Onion harvest brings some $50 million directly into that state’s economy, and the estimated economic impact of related marketing activities is $145 million to $150 million annually.