Producing Customer Products from Sheep:
The Sheep Safety and Quality Assurance Program

Written For:
The American Sheep Industry Association

By:
Deborah L. Roeber, Keith E. Belk, Stephen B. LeValley,
John A. Scanga, John N. Sofos, and Gary C. Smith,
Colorado State University

Foreword
The American Sheep Industry Association (ASI) began development of an industry-wide quality assurance program in 1991. Since then, ASI, through cooperative agreements with USDA, Colorado State University, University of Minnesota, and Texas A&M University, conducted a quality audit of meat, wool and milk from U.S. sheep. In the final report of that audit, industry problem areas were identified, and intervention strategies to assist in the reduction of quality challenges were developed. Education is one of the strategies for making improvements in the U.S. sheep industry. This publication provides information about objectives and procedures for use by sheep producers in generating safe, high quality products. The mission of the Sheep Safety and Quality Assurance Program (SSQA) is to maximize consumer confidence in, and acceptance of, sheep products by using research and education to improve management during the production of safe and high quality sheep products.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank ASI for the opportunity to be involved in the advancement of the Sheep Safety and Quality Assurance Program, especially Paul Rodgers the ASI Health Committee.
We also would like to thank all of those individuals that were involved in the development of the manual, especially:

• All the individuals involved in the development of the first edition of the manual: "Producing High Quality Consumer Products From Sheep" in 1995 and Woody Lane for developing the 1999 insert as they served as the basis for this publication.

• Those that were involved in the peer-review process of this document before publication, including Bob Stobart, Dan Hale, William Shulaw, Darwin Yoder, David Greene, Scott Haskell, Nevil Speer, and Cindy Wolf.

• All the individuals that provided key information for the development and support of the outlined criteria, including Adrian Bayley of the North American Compendiums, Meg Oller of the United States Food and Drug Administration, and Diane Sutton of the United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

• Those that contributed photos and gave their time to assist in the design of the publication including Cindy Wolf, Eileen Kuhlmann and Jeanne Schacht.