It was the 1970s and America's cattle herd was as diverse as the producers who owned them. To the American beef consumer beef was beef and the breed of the cattle didn't matter.
Cattle buyer John “Jack” Schmidt, now of Riverton, Wyoming, was working at the Kansas City Stockyards buying cattle for his customers. He had a knack for finding the mid-range feeder cattle, no matter what the breed, that his customers could feed and turn a profit.
His customers were not concerned with breed or pedigree — then.
He didn’t know at the time that cattle marketing was about to change, and Schmidt found himself with a front row seat to a program that would change the color of the cattle industry.
The Certified Angus Beef campaign was about to be unleashed onto the cattle world.
Highball Time
The sale finally wound down on that hot night in the late 1970s at the Kansas City Stockyards and Schmidt was ready to relax after a long day of cattle buying with his signature Seagram’s 7 and 7.
He was covered with cow manure as he made his way into the ritzy Golden Ox Bar and found a seat among some of the movers and shakers in the industry.
John "Jack" Jacobson was sitting near Schmidt and as the drinks flowed, he aired his frustrations to anyone who would listen.
Jacobson was running his family’s meat packing plant in Liberal, Kansas, and, according to Schmidt, was complaining that he couldn’t get enough cattle to run at capacity.
The American Angus Association was headquartered in Saint Joe, Missouri, just 45 minutes north of the Kansas City Stockyards and its executives often came down to watch the sale.
They were welcomed into the conversation at the bar, although it was most likely only because they bought a round for everyone.
“I was just a fly on the wall and more interested in drinking than talking, so I don't really remember who came up with the idea of a cooperative venture between Jacobson and the Angus Association, but it was an idea that changed the color of America's cow herd,” Schmidt said.
As he listened to that conversation of nearly 50 years ago, Schmidt thought it was the booze talking as representatives from the American Angus Association began pitching “certified beef.”
“I was laughing up my sleeve at them,” Schmidt said. “I wondered at what these guys were doing. Well, they were changing the world, but I wasn’t smart enough to know it.”
He doesn’t remember them using the word “brand,” but that was the first branded marketing that he had ever heard of in the cattle business.
“Certified Angus beef has become a trademark of quality,” Schmidt said, still shaking his head over the successful marketing move.
“It changed the color of the cow herd in the whole damn United States,” he said. “One of their pitch lines was “they are worth more if they're black” and for a long time that was the truth.”
With the plant finally meeting his slaughter quota because of a steady supply endorsed by the American Angus Association, Jacobson went on to grow the National Packing Co. into one of the big four packers in the United States.
By 1978, Certified Angus Beef (CAB) was introduced officially. Within a decade, Certified Angus took over the cattle industry.
The National Packing Company partnered with the American Angus Association to market certified angus beef as the quality beef in America. The campaign worked and America’s herds are now predominately black angus. Bob Dole and Eli Jacobson at the grand opening of the packing company in 1969. (Courtesy Robert and Elizabeth Dole Archive and Special Collections, Dole Institute of Politics) 
The Certified Angus Beef program was the first of its kind, and when Wyoming rancher Jack Schmidt first heard the idea over a highball, he thought it was silly. Then he watched the industry turn upside down as Black Angus became the breed of choice. (Getty Images) 
The Eileenmere was a respected bloodline of black angus and registered through the American Angus Association. In the 1970s, the association came up with a plan to save their waning industry. They would certify their angus beef and sell it to the public as mark of a higher quality beef. 
Cattle buyer Jack Schmidt believes that it’s the quality of the beef that matters, not the color of the hide. When he first heard executives from the American Angus Association discussing the practice of certifying their beef, he thought it was crazy talk. He didn’t think that people would start buying cattle because of the color of their hide. (Courtesy Jack Schmidt)
Prized Pedigree
“The American Angus Association is a registry, and they've been around ever since Angus came over from Scotland in the 1800s,” Schmidt said. “It’s where you could register your dams and the bulls.”
Schmidt was familiar with registered Angus and their bloodlines.
As a 4-H kid growing up in Kansas, he had his own small herd from the famous Eileenmere lineage, the same line of cattle owned by the founder and namesake of the retail stores JCPenney, as well as President Dwight Eisenhower.
Schmidt showed his registered Angus cows and market steers at the county fair and the American Royal.
Those shows taught him that the actual worth of his cattle wasn't determined as much by breed as by the quality of the beef.
The annoying paperwork he had to fill out with each calf to prove its lineage had no effect on flavor. It was about the quality of the beef and getting it ready to sell to the consumer.
Schmidt grew his herd to 100 registered Angus he had raised from the time he was 8 until he was 16.
He was fortunate because his dad had bought him an Eileenmere cow from a respected and coveted lineage.
“They were all registered of the Eileenmere bloodlines, which turned out a decade later to be very popular bloodline,” Schmidt said.
He registered each one in his herd and by the end, he sold them for a small fortune.
“When I turned 16, I sold them because the prices were really, really high,” he said. “I had enough money to put in savings to pay for my college education and had enough money left over to buy a 1965 GTO off the showroom floor with everything on it for $3,500.”
Schmidt acknowledges that his herd was registered Angus because his dad got a good deal on his first cow and could have just as easily been any other breed.
Cattle Buyers Want Angus
“I was still laughing about the Angus thing, so I didn’t promote the Angus breed,” Schmidt said. “If somebody really thought they were the greatest, I agreed with them. Cattle to me were a commodity.”
Over the next eight to 10 years, Schmidt watched in amazement as the cattle industry shifted to valuing Angus as the most prized cattle.
“I got more and more people wanting me to buy black cattle for them to feed,” Schmidt said. “The trend started where they would tell me that they wanted something black.”
Over time, his buyers would replace their entire herd with black heifers and changed the way America bought beef.
“Angus became a quality grade,” Schmidt said, “as well as a breed of cattle.”
The label “Certified Angus Beef” doesn’t guarantee that the beef is from purebred Angus cattle.
The certification requires the cattle to have a black hide, but that doesn’t mean the cattle are pure Angus.
Like Schmidt, the association is more concerned about the quality of beef when it is certifying its beef although it insisted on a consistent hide color, automatically disqualifying colored cattle from their program.
The Certified Angus Beef program was the first of its kind, and when Wyoming rancher Jack Schmidt first heard the idea over a highball, he thought it was silly. Then he watched the industry turn upside down as Black Angus became the breed of choice. (Courtesy Jack Schmidt via Facebook) 
Jack Schmidt was buying cattle in Liberal, Kansas when he first heard of a program to certify beef in the late 1970s. He thought the plan was ridiculous since he knew that the cattle’s true value was the quality of their beef and not the color of their hide. (Courtesy Jack Schmidt) 
Cattle buyer Jack Schmidt with his son, Jake. Schmidt believed that the value of a cow was the quality of the beef and not the color of the hide. He was surprised when the color of America’s herds became predominately black because of a marketing campaign toting the value of black angus. (Courtesy Jack Schmidt) 
Jack Schmidt was buying cattle in Liberal, Kansas when he first heard of a program to certify beef in the late 1970s. He thought the plan was ridiculous since he knew that the cattle’s true value was the quality of their beef and not the color of their hide. (Courtesy Jack Schmidt)
Today’s Cattle Industry
At first, Schmidt said, the criteria weren’t too strict. To be certified, an Angus must be “mostly” black, so it was OK to have a white face but as time went on, even that wasn’t acceptable.
Today, there are strict criteria the Angus must meet to be listed as Certified Angus Beef (CAB). The beef must possess modest or higher marbling and every cut, from CAB flank steak to ribeye, must meet quality criteria.
Cattle must be harvested under 30 months of age and traced to family farms.
While all CAB beef comes from Angus cattle, not all Angus beef qualifies for the CAB brand. On its website, the American Angus Association claims that only three in 10 Angus can meet their qualifications.
The latest trend Schmidt is observing in the cattle business is a move toward grass-fed beef which was once the bane of fat cattle buyers.
“Back then, grass-fed was a big negative,” Schmidt said. “Grass would put a yellow tinge to the fat and that's a negative because people wanted to see white fat and that comes from grain-fed beef.”
The other change is that he is seeing a little bit more color on the ranges of Wyoming.
“Charolais have really made a comeback,” he said. “You're seeing a little bit of that, but I don't see horned Herefords coming back yet.”
As Schmidt thinks back to his years as a cattle buyer, he is still amazed at the vision those executives had nearly 50 years ago at the Golden Ox Bar.
That vision promoted the Angus industry and changed the color of America's cow herd with their Certified Angus Beef campaign.
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
