Bedford – Beef and veal have been popular this past year within middle and high school culinary classrooms across the state. For its eighth year, the Pennsylvania Beef Council (PBC) with support from Mountain States Rosen and Marcho Veal provided beef and veal grants to family and consumer science educators during the 2019-2020 school year with over 1,900 students benefitting from the grant program. The program had the potential to reach many more students, but the premature closure of in-person instruction, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many educators were unable to completely their lessons.
Denise Lyons, educator at Rochester Middle and High Schools in Rochester, PA commented, “My students probably would have never even tasted veal if it were not for this grant. I love this program; the veal was awesome. My students benefit from this more than you know, we are a low-income school district. As a beef producer myself it is great to see my checkoff dollars going to such a great cause.” This testimony speaks volumes to the impact the program has within our state.
The PBC is launching the Beef & Veal in the Classroom program for the upcoming 2020-2021 school year. Each year, 60 Family and Consumer Science classrooms are selected to participate in the Beef & Veal in the Classroom program. Teachers are either offered reimbursement for beef purchases of veal product delivered to their school for in-classroom lessons. For more information about the 2020-2021 grant program, please visit the PA Beef Council’s website.
To view more photos from the program’s activities, visit the PA Beef Council Facebook page.
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The Beef Checkoff Program was established as part of the 1985 Farm Bill. The checkoff assesses $1 per head on the sale of live domestic and imported cattle, in addition to a comparable assessment on imported beef and beef products. States may retain up to 50 cents on the dollar and forward the other 50 cents per head to the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board, which administers the national checkoff program, subject to USDA approval. Internal links within this document are funded and maintained by the Beef Checkoff. All other outgoing links are to websites maintained by third parties.
