by Dr. Jon DeClerck, ASA EVP
The Responsibility to Improve
There are moments in an association’s history when standing still is the easier choice. This is one of them.
The updated $API and $TI are going to bring change. Some cattle are going to move, and animals that looked outstanding under the old indexes may not look quite as shiny under the new ones. Some breeders will be frustrated, and I understand why. Years of selection decisions, pedigrees, marketing, and pride can be tied to those cattle. A re-ranking is not just a number on a screen when you have invested part of your program in that animal.
Before we decide that discomfort means we are headed in the wrong direction, it is worth remembering who we are. The American Simmental Association was not built by people who were afraid to question convention. From the beginning, this Association has been willing to measure cattle, collect records, follow the facts, and use science to build genetics that matter to the commercial beef industry.That willingness to challenge ourselves has been one of the defining characteristics of ASA.
We have not gotten every turn right. There were periods when the breed, like much of the industry, chased extremes. The frame race is one example. But some of the most important moments in our history came when breeders and staff were willing to ask whether the direction of the breed still matched the needs of the cattle business.
For the first time in more than a decade, Dr. Jerry Lipsey joined us at an ASA meeting during Fall Focus. I asked him to speak because Dr. Lipsey is someone I have long admired, particularly for the way he led. He understood that you do not move a breed simply by issuing a directive. You do it through education, conversations, persistence, and sometimes one handshake at a time. He helped steer this breed back toward science, objective information, and cattle built to serve the commercial industry. As he walked us through major turning points in ASA history, a common thread became clear: this Association has made its greatest progress when it has been willing to learn, adapt, and follow where science leads.
That history feels especially relevant today. “Profit Through Science” cannot simply be something printed beneath a logo. It has to describe how we operate when the science challenges what is familiar. There will be times when answers are uncomfortable, rankings change, and leaving things alone would be easier. Those are the moments when that philosophy matters most.
For 21 years, $API and $TI have helped move this breed forward. They worked. But the industry has changed, and science has changed with it. Today, we can estimate profitability more precisely.
That means our yardstick needs to improve. When you improve the yardstick, rankings change. A bull did not become genetically different overnight because his percentile moved. What changed is our ability to estimate how his genetics fit the economic realities of the beef business. If a better measuring stick gives us a different answer, our responsibility is not to sand down the marks until we get the old answer back.
Our responsibility is to learn from it. The updated indexes ask us to keep pressure on cow cost and mature size while producing cattle with value beyond the ranch gate. They will require us to consider carcass weight, efficiency, fertility, longevity, and breed complementarity together rather than chase a single trait. There will still be more than one way to create a profitable Simmental animal.
That is a strength, not a weakness. The commercial producer does not owe Simmental their business. We have to earn it. We earn it when our females stay in the herd. We earn it when our calves perform. We earn it when our cattle create value for the next owner, and when the product at the end of the chain hits the mark.
That is the benchmark. We can respect our history without freezing it in place. We can be proud of the cattle that brought us here without insisting yesterday’s rankings must remain today’s rankings. The people who built this Association used the best information they had to make the breed better.
We owe them more than nostalgia. We owe them the same courage. Our job is not to protect yesterday’s rankings. It is to give breeders the best tools we can to build tomorrow’s cattle. Change is uncomfortable. Progress usually is. But this is not a departure from who we are. This is who we are.
