Pennsylvania Launches Dairy Animal Care & Quality Assurance Certification program

Dairy animal well-being and the condition of pre-harvest dairy cattle have become increasingly public issues. To enhance consumer confidence and improve the quality and value of market cow beef, dairy producers have long been encouraged to participate in voluntary quality assurance programs that demonstrate their commitment to quality animal care and food production through training, certification and verification.

The challenge for previous programs under the name “Dairy Beef Quality Assurance (DBQA)” has been in getting dairy producers to recognize them as ‘dairy,’ not ‘beef’ programs.

Toward this end, Pennsylvania dairy groups have spent the past year forging a relationship with the PA Beef Council to develop a producer certification program tailor-made for dairy. The Northeast and Mid-Atlantic DBQA program—originally developed and implemented by the PA Beef Council and BQA Commission in the late 1990s—was the logical foundation for this new collaborative effort. 

The PA Beef Council worked with representatives of the Professional Dairy Managers of PA (PDMP), PA Dairy Stakeholders, PA Center for Dairy Excellence (CDE), PA Department of Agriculture, Penn State University departments of Dairy and Animal Science and Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, and the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, to upgrade the previous DBQA program to not only be more user friendly for dairy producers, but to also include the emerging umbrella of principles and guidelines from the National Dairy Animal Well-Being Initiative.

The result is the new Dairy Animal Care and Quality Assurance (DACQA) program, which consists of DACQA guidelines, producer training, producer self-assessment checklists, producer certification contract, third-party verification audit, and an 84-page reference manual.

The mission of DACQA is: “to produce quality dairy and beef products for consumers by focusing dairy producers’ attention on quality animal care through the use of science, research and education initiatives.”

DACQA was officially rolled-out in August of 2008: first, during a special PDMP Dairy Industry Issues Forum in Bellefonte (August 7) and then during Ag Progress Days in Rock Springs (August 19-21) where flyers created by the CDE were distributed to announce the program. Copies of the 2008 preview edition of the DACQA reference manual were also on display.

While the DACQA program already incorporates the National Dairy Animal Well-Being Initiative’s preliminary umbrella of principles and guidelines set forth at the 2007 World Dairy Expo last October, the program and reference manual will be further reviewed and updated as necessary to align with the final version of these principles and guidelines, which will be issued by the National Dairy Animal Well-Being Initiative at the upcoming 2007 World Dairy Expo in October.

“There is a great deal of excitement building from the dairy and beef sectors for this project,” says Paul Slayton, Executive Director of the PA Beef Council. “This proactive effort addresses consumer interest in animal well-being and confidence in the quality and safety of dairy and beef products, while at the same time assuring, through best management practices, the quality of beef marketed from dairy cows. Elements of the DACQA program also have a positive impact on individual dairy producer profitability as well as the long-term strength of Pennsylvania’s beef and dairy industries.”

The training, certification and verification components of DACQA offer dairy producers a way to document and be recognized for compliance with quality assured management practices and to improve profitability in various areas of their operation at the same time.

Seeing the importance of this program to ensuring the long-term strength of and consumer confidence in Pennsylvania’s dairy farms, AgChoice Farm Credit and Cargill Meat Solutions also recently pledged financial sponsorship toward DACQA program needs.

Producer training and certification workshops are expected to begin this fall.

The 2008 preview edition of the DACQA reference manual is available online at the PDMP and CDE websites: www.pdmp.org and www.centerfordairyexcellence.org. Watch these websites and Farmshine for announcements about certification workshops. For more detailed information about program administration, contact the PA Beef Council at 888.423.3372.

Click Here To Download A Copy Of The DACQA Reference Manual.