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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Angie Stump Denton, Beef Improvement Federation Communication Coordinator, 785-562-6197
June 21, 2019
Butler Wins Baker/Cundiff Honors
BROOKINGS, South Dakota — The Beef Improvement Federation (BIF) presented the Baker/Cundiff Award to Madison Butler, Vincennes, Indiana, June 20 during the group’s annual meeting and symposium in Brookings, South Dakota.
The annual Frank Baker/Larry Cundiff Beef Improvement Essay Contest for graduate students provides an opportunity to recognize outstanding student research and competitive writing in honor of Frank Baker and Larry Cundiff.
Butler is working on her master’s degree in animal breeding and genetics at Kansas State University. Her essay was titled “Review of Genetic Studies of Bull Fertility.”
Each year, winning essays are selected and published in the annual BIF Research Symposium and Annual Meeting Proceedings. Each winning author will receive a $1,000 scholarship.
Baker is widely recognized as the “Founding Father” of the BIF. He played a key leadership role in helping establish BIF in 1968 while he was chairman of the Department of Animal Science at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Cundiff retired after 40 years as a research geneticist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service. He was the research leader of the genetics and breeding research unit at the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center from 1976 until 2005. Cundiff has not only designed, conducted and published some of the most important beef breeding research of the 20th century, but has also led in the transfer of new technology to the beef industry through his continued work in BIF and his presentations made across the nation and around the world.
More than 500 beef producers, academia and industry representatives attended the organization’s 51st annual convention. BIF’s mission is to help improve the industry by promoting greater acceptance of beef cattle performance evaluation.
For more information about this year’s symposium, including additional award winners and coverage of the meeting and tours, visit BIFconference.com. For more information about BIF, visit Beefimprovement.org.
The Beef Improvement Federation (BIF) is an organization dedicated to coordinating all segments of the beef industry — from researchers and producers to retailers — in an effort to improve the efficiency, profitability and sustainability of beef production. The organization was initiated almost 70 years ago to encourage the use of objective measurements to evaluate beef cattle. Continuing the tradition, BIF is now the clearinghouse for developing standardized programs and methodologies for recording of performance data for all traits, from birth weights to carcass traits. Its three-leaf-clover logo symbolizes the link between industry, extension and research.
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Madison Butler, Kansas State University, was presented the Beef Improvement Federation Baker/Cundiff Award June 20 at the organization’s 51st annual convention in Brookings, South Dakota. Pictured (from left) are Megan Rolf, K-State associate professor and BIF board member; Butler; and Lee Leachman, 2018-2019 BIF president.
