Hereford provides recording services for American breeds group

Five American breed associations including the American Brahman Breeders Association, Santa Gertrudis Breeders International, Beefmaster Breeders United, the American Red Brangus Association and United Braford Breeders have entered into a service agreement with the American Beef Records Association (ABRA), a wholly owned subsidiary of the American Hereford Association (AHA). ABRA will provide registry and performance recording services to the five associations' respective memberships. These associations have been working together for the past two years to take advantage of mutually beneficial opportunities.

The AHA Board of Directors saw an arrangement with the American Breeds group as a long-range opportunity to bring more economies of scale and organizational synergies to each of the businesses involved, according to Jack Holden, AHA president. "We welcome the opportunity to provide service to these American Breeds and look forward to future opportunities together."

Craig Huffhines, AHA executive vice president, adds that ABRA is able to provide service to these American Breeds as well as other associations due to its talented technical staff and experience using the international livestock registry system (ILR) of the Agricultural Business Research Institute (ABRI) in Armidale, Australia.

ABRI began providing information solutions to the seedstock industry in Australia and New Zealand in the early 1970s and today handles more than 98 percent of the seedstock beef cattle registry in these two countries. The ILR system is the market leader in North America, where 16 different organizations utilize its advanced features. Worldwide, over 80 associations use the system.

In November 2005 AHA invited the five breeds to attend a demonstration on the ILR2 system, the next generation of ILR. Attendees could immediately see its management advantages. With just one computer system servicing all five breeds, each association could focus its resources on breed improvement and marketing, rather than software programming and data flow.

ILR2 has been in development by an ABRI programming team for more than four years, according to Stacy Sanders, AHA's director of information technology and ABRA's general manager. "The estimated cost is $2 million, which is a burden that none of our organizations could bear alone. This cost is shared through licensing across many organizations operating around the world, similar to the way many other software companies license software globally. We are able to access very advanced technology for a small fraction of the cost of overall development."

By third quarter 2007, ABRA will provide the five breeds with customized services through use of the ILR2 system. The system will take into account each of the association's unique rules and guidelines. Each association will retain full responsibility for maintaining their individual breed functions and organization.

"In today's highly cost competitive beef industry, we felt it was time to leverage our respective databases, memberships and service requirements into one service providing entity, giving us more service power in one large group as opposed to individual groups," says Wendell Schronk of Beefmaster Breeders United. "By being together we can meet periodically as organization executives and staff, and tackle hard hitting issues, as well as provide our respective memberships the best services available in a cost competitive manner."

Date: 6/22/06

	Web hpj.com

Copyright/Privacy
Copyright 1995-2008.  High Plains Publishers, Inc.  All rights reserved.  Any republishing of these pages, including electronic reproduction of the editorial archives or classified advertising, is strictly prohibited. If you have questions or comments you can reach us at High Plains Journal 1500 E. Wyatt Earp Blvd., P.O. Box 760, Dodge City, KS 67801 or call 1-800-452-7171. Email: webmaster@hpj.com