What is “CAR”?

The term “CAR”, as used by the American Wagyu Association (“AWA), stands for “Complete Animal Reporting”.  This is a term used to describe a member animal reporting methodology by which the association attempts to enforce reporting by its members of 100% of the animals in its herd.  Other breed associations refer to this concept as “Whole Herd Reporting” (“WHR”), or as “Total Herd Enrollment” (“THE”) or as “Total Herd Reporting” (“THR”) or as “Complete Herd Reporting” (“CHR”).  The AWA decided to use the term “CAR” to describe this new reporting methodology and fee structure.  This more “complete” reporting methodology, irrespective of what a breed association decides to call it, is increasingly considered a “best practice” for breed associations.

Cattle breed associations have been increasingly migrating away from “per new registered animal” fees charged to members towards this type of “more complete” reporting in order to obtain a more complete database of the animals in the breed, which is useful in terms of generating EPD (“Expected Progeny Difference”) data for the breed.  In general, this “complete herd” reporting methodology is utilized by breed associations to spread fees over the entire active herd rather than based only on newly (and often selectively) registered animals.  This encourages data to be reported on all animals and reduces selective reporting. Complete herd reporting improves the reliability of EPDs in general, but is especially important for computing reproduction EPDs. With conventional reporting of “new registered calves” methods, if data is missing it is impossible to know if that is because a calf was not born or the producer simply chose not to report the data.  And with selective reporting of only the calves that the producers wish to report, the registry data from which EPDs for the breed are calculated is only reflecting the data from the select animals that have been reported.

“CAR” was announced by the AWA in 2017 and implemented starting in 2018, replacing the prior “per new registered animal” fees with “per active cow owned” fees.  There are pros and cons associated with the new CAR fee structure.  It is important to note that while CAR was introduced in late 2017 in conjunction with the AWA’s new “Digital Beef” herd registry management online software system, and that while the implementation of CAR requires a software system capable of assessing association fees to members based upon the active animals owned by a particular member, “CAR” is not “Digital Beef” and visa versa.

Digital Beef is an online animal registry and EPD management and reporting system computer system.  CAR is a fee structure that the AWA board of directors decided to implement because it was decided by AWA management and the AWA board of directors that charging AWA members fees based upon the number of cows currently owned was superior in many respects to fees based on the registration by members of new calves.

The prior method of charging fees based upon members registering new calves provided a financial incentive for members to register only those new calves that the member would benefit from registering (heifers and bulls, but not non-breeding animals).  The fact that members were required to pay a fee to register a non-breeding (meat) animal calf resulted in many (or most) non-breeding calves not being recorded/registered.  When meat animal calves are not recorded/registered in the registry it is impossible for the AWA to collect data on the missing meat animals.  Collecting data on non-breeding meat animals is critical to the success of building a database of EPD data for the Wagyu herd, particularly for important carcass trait EPDs.  Therefore, it is critical to have non-breeding meat animals recorded/registered in the registry.

The new CAR fee structure involves a fee being collected from AWA members for each active, registered cow owned by a member starting in 2018.  No fee is charged to the member for registering new calves born in 2018 and afterwards.  The fee for each cow is $30.00 per year.  Under the old “fee for registering a new calf” fee structure, the fee for registering a new heifer or bull calf was $45.00 and the fee for registering a non-breeding calf was $15.00.  So whether or not an AWA member incurs more or less fees under the new CAR fee structure will be vary and be dependent upon the following:

• How often cows have calves.  If a cow has a calf every year on average then under the old “per new calf” fee structure the member would have paid either $45.00 or $15.00 per year depending upon whether the calf was a bull/heifer or a non-breeding animal.  Under the new CAR fee structure the member will pay $30.00 per year per cow.  If a cow does not have a calf in a particular year the total fees will be higher since the member will be paying a fee for the cow that did not have a calf.  But if a cow has a calf every year, and if the member was previously registering the substantial majority of all calves produced from the cow, the total fees should be approximately the same for a “normal” mix of bull/heifer/meat calves.
• How many of a particular cow’s calves are heifers/bulls vs. non-breeding animals.  Since the old fee structure charged a lower fee for non-breeding calves, even if the AWA member was registering its non-breeding animals (most were not) the total fees incurred under the old “per new calf registered” fee structure could have been less than under the new CAR fee structure if the member produced a larger than normal percentage of non-breeding animals for each cow owned.

While there the new CAR fee structure will sometimes result in some members paying less total fees per year, and some members paying higher fees per year, the AWA felt that moving to a “compete animal reporting” structure was in the best interest of the AWA and the Wagyu breed as a whole.  Overall, the AWA believes that the total fees charged to members under the new CAR fee structure will not be meaningfully different than under the old fee structure, but that the new CAR fee structure will eliminate financial disincentives for registering non-breeding animals and other animals that were not previously being registered by members.  And the AWA believes that this will result in a faster path forward to collecting the data required to generate EPDs for the AWA Wagyu breed registry.