Breed Diversity, Heart Disease, Import Export

Summary

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Cattle Chat – Episode Summary

Podcast: Cattle Chat
Host: BCI Cattle Chat Team
Date: September 26, 2025
Episode: Breed Diversity, Heart Disease, Import Export

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Overview

This episode brings together veterinary and industry experts from the Beef Cattle Institute at Kansas State University to explore key issues impacting today’s beef industry. The discussion covers three main topics: managing breed diversity in commercial herds, recent findings about heart disease prevalence across livestock species, and the complexities of cattle import and export—both practical and political.

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Main Topics & Key Insights

1. Breed Diversity: How Much is Too Much?

Listener Question:

• "If I already have a two-breed cross, should I add a third breed to my herd to get more heterosis, or is there such a thing as too much breed diversity?"

Key Discussion Points:

• Benefits and Risks of Heterosis.
  • Heterosis (hybrid vigor) is valuable for improving fertility and performance, especially when crossing genetically distant breeds (e.g., Bos indicus x Bos taurus).
  • “The biggest amount of heterosis comes from breeds that are most diverse in their genotype.” – D, 04:08
  • However, too many breeds can complicate management and dilute desired traits.
• Breed Complementarity:
  • Combining breeds should not only maximize heterosis but also bring together complementary traits (fertility, growth, carcass quality, etc.).
  • “The breeds have to complement each other. ... That's why a lot of times people like a two-breed cross because it's probably the easiest to manage.” – C, 06:13
• Genetic Management & Practicality:
  • Effective record keeping and clear breeding goals are vital, especially when attempting more complex, multi-breed systems.
  • Consistency in output/product is often easier with a two-breed cross.
  • “If you are going to try and select for certain traits, you need to have the tools in place to monitor and measure those traits accurately.” – B, 06:43
• Industry Trends:
  • Over 30 years, breed differences have narrowed due to shared selection targets (feedlot performance, carcass quality), so focusing on individual animal diversity may sometimes offer more benefit than simply adding breeds.

Notable Quotes:

• “There can be some downsides of trying to cross breed and just if our focus is heterosis and not maximum production.” – D, 05:03
• “When you add another breed, you have the potential to have cows within the same herd that have a pretty different breed makeup. ... You want a consistent product.” – C, 09:17

Timestamps:

• [03:13] – Introducing breed diversity topic
• [03:45-10:29] – Deep dive and perspectives on genetic management

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2. Heart Disease in Livestock: Surprising Prevalence & Species Differences

Recent Study Discussed:

• Survey of heart lesions in slaughtered livestock (cattle, pigs, sheep, goats) in the Czech Republic
• Highest prevalence: Piglets (14%), finisher pigs (8%), adult cows and calves (lower but present in all groups)

Key Discussion Points:

• Understanding Heart Disease:
  • Not a single condition, but a group (valvular, muscular, infectious, left/right-sided issues).
  • The heart compensates well until late-stage disease, so slaughter findings often reflect compensated, chronic disease.
  • “There can be a lot of different causes of heart problems, and the body does compensate as long as it can, but that's why...sometimes it goes south really fast.” – C, 12:23
• Production Focus vs. Animal Health:
  • Commercial selection is for rapid growth, not athleticism or heart health—potentially increasing heart stress or vulnerability, especially in pigs.
  • “We’re not selecting for food animals to become athletes. ... That trade off might be at the expense of heart function.” – B, 13:12
• Study Methodology Limitations:
  • The paper only examined hearts; full clinical relevance (e.g., by examining correlating organ changes) isn’t clear.

Notable Quotes:

• “Heart disease is not one disease. You can have problems with the heart valves, you can have problems with the heart muscles ... So it shouldn't really be surprising that we could have those types of problems.” – C, 11:43

Timestamps:

• [10:29] – Introduction of heart disease article
• [11:41-13:34] – Group reactions and industry/policy tie-ins

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3. Import/Export of Cattle: Benefits, Risks & Policy Dilemmas

Context:

• Recent border closures due to New World Screwworm concerns; bigger picture of animal health versus economic policy.

Key Discussion Points:

• Economic Interests Along Supply Chain:
  • Limiting imports often benefits cow-calf producers in the short term (higher prices), but can disadvantage feeders, packers, and consumers.
  • “If you can keep animals out of the country ... put an upward pressure on prices at the cow-calf level.” – E, 15:09
  • “Short term benefits don't always become long term benefits.” – C, 18:59
• Animal Health and Biosecurity:
  • Disease prevention (like screwworm) justified current border closures, but paradoxically, inspected cattle at official sites are less likely to transmit disease than smuggled or uninspected animals.
  • “Maybe the least likely cattle to cross the border with this disease ... are the ones that come through the inspection sites.” – C, 16:03
• Trade Complexity & Unintended Consequences:
  • Closures affect not just live cattle trade, but can trigger retaliatory trade barriers in other commodities (beef, pork, cars).
  • Loss of feedyard profitability cascades, potentially reducing future calf demand and harming cow-calf producers long-term.
  • “In all of these types of discussions, it's important to remember that there are second order, third order ... effects.” – B, 17:57
• Exports’ Critical Role:
  • The US exports 10-15% of its beef (especially organ meats not consumed domestically), adding $400+ per head to income.
  • “According to USMEF, I think about $425, $450 per head is result of export markets.” – E, 20:21
• What Can Producers Do?
  • Direct control is limited; best strategies are staying involved in producer associations, paying attention to policies, and focusing on sound business management.
  • “You do the things you can control ... but this is the role of belonging to organizations and making sure your voice is heard.” – C, 22:55

Notable Quotes:

• “Usually short term benefits erode the ability for us to have long term benefits. That seems to be the way life works.” – B, 19:03
• “There’s a role for veterinarians to have an opinion based on animal health. There’s a role for economists to have an opinion based on...the cattle industry. But then ... trade of cattle isn’t in a vacuum.” – C, 20:28
• “Everybody's going to be impacted or potentially could be impacted at...a different rate or even an opposite impact.” – E, 22:04

Timestamps:

• [14:56] – Opening of import/export discussion
• [15:54-23:31] – Economic, health, and policy perspectives; what individual producers can do

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Notable Moments & Quotes

• Memorable Analogy:

  • The hot dog toppings debate as a lighthearted introduction segued into breed diversity and “diversity within the hot dog” (03:13), drawing a parallel between food variety and breeding strategies.

• Industry Wisdom:

  • “Individual versus industry. So what's good for me may or may not be good for the entire industry.” – A, 21:27

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Conclusion

This episode offers a nuanced view into management, health, and economic questions facing cattle producers. Whether it’s balancing breed diversity for optimal herd output, contextualizing animal health findings, or navigating the complicated terrain of animal trade policy, the experts bring home a central point: success in the cattle industry requires balancing biological, economic, and political factors—often with no easy answers.

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign BCI Cattle Chat. I'm Brad White. Happy to have you with us today and happy to have our crew here in the studio. Morning, Todd.

[B]

Good morning, Bob.

[C]

Hello, everybody.

[D]

Philip hello, guys.

[A]

Dustin, Good morning. We have several great topics to talk about today. One was a listener question on breed diversity. How much is too much? We're also going to talk a little bit about heart disease based on a recent article that was published. And we're going to wrap up talking about importing and exporting battle and what are the implications for us as we think about those topics. If you have a topic you'd like us to discuss or a question for us, you can send us an email, bcisu. Edu, or reach out to us on social media. Before we get into our discussion for the day. I went to dinner. Bob and I had a dinner last week and we went to. And Bob ordered the hot dog tray, which had many different hot dogs and many different toppings. Smothered hot dogs, which led to a debate which I wanted to get you guys to weigh in on because I think there is some of the questions I ask you. There's really no right answer. This one. I think there is a right answer. The best hot dog with toppings. What are you gonna put on it? Todd?

[B]

Well, I gotta go with J Dog's sauce. If you've ever been to Utah and you go to J Dogs, it's this hot dog stand. They've got this sauce that goes right on, right on that big Polish dog. And it is amazing.

[A]

And that's it. Just the sauce.

[B]

You can put onions and sauerkraut and jalapenos and stuff on it. But it's the sauce, man, that J Dog salt keep you coming back.

[A]

I've never had it. I may be open to modify.

[C]

All right, Bob. So I'm kind of going with kind of the big Polish hot dog, you know, serious hot dog, not just, not just a little thing. And it's all about the relish. And I don't know what all the ingredients are, but when I get a good hot dog relish. So the right spices, the right pickles, that, that's where you. That's the mark of a good hot dog, is a really good relish.

[D]

So how many different hot dogs were on this hot dog tray? Because I'm trying to think there's beef in this pork. I mean, what, what turkey dog?

[C]

I know there were. There were three hot dogs.

[A]

They were all hot dogs.

[C]

They were all beef hot dogs, to be honest. But it was, it was the well, the spices in the hot dogs were different. And then the toppings, the. On each of the three hot dogs.

[D]

Okay.

[C]

It was a creative name.

[A]

It was a triple dog dare you. And the tray was, it was a.

[C]

Lot of, it was a lot of food.

[A]

Yeah. Okay.

[D]

I mean, traditionally on a hot dog, I, I mean I'm not a big ketchup and mustard guy, but on a hot dog, ketchup, mustard, relish, maybe some onions, the classics. But if, but if I have my choice, I'm going with a brat instead of a hot dog in. We're going to do barbecue sauce on a brat.

[A]

Barbecue sauce. All right, Dustin.

[E]

One of my first projects out of grad school was traceability. And we visit a lot of hacking plants across the country and I was in a pork and I just don't eat a lot of hot dogs anymore.

[A]

But if I had to, I'd put.

[E]

A whole bunch of chili and cheese and a lot of stuff. So I really wouldn't necessarily taste the hot dog.

[A]

I guess I bet traceability on a hot dog would be tricky.

[D]

Worse than hamburger.

[A]

That'd be tricky. So speaking of diversity within the hot dog, let's talk about breed diversity. And we had a listener question. And the setup is the listener runs a commercial herd and they have a two breed cross. They've added in a third breed and he's wondering, am I watering down my herd? And to boil this question down, should I add another breed or is too much heterosis possible or should I always be shooting for more and more heterosis?

[D]

Well, I'll start with some thoughts. Heterosis is a good thing. And one of the big things we do is try to, we try to get as much as we can from cross breeding. But there's a couple of things to, to, to keep in mind. One, you, you can mess it up if you, if you've got, if it's so complicated that you can't manage it well and you end up back crossing too much or something like that, you can met, you can mess it up. And the other thing is, what breeds are you crossing? Because the biggest amount of heterosis comes from breeds that are most diverse in their genotype. So think Boss Indica is cross with Bos Taurus. So that's where you get a big heterosis bump because. Especially in reproductive traits in that cross. But they're the most diverse. And so if I can only limit the number of breeds I can manage, I want to try to use breeds that are very diverse in their genotype. Is going to get me the most heterosis. Now the thing is though, if the heterosis is not as good as the one single breed itself, it doesn't do you any good. So you got to keep that in mind too. So there can be some downsides of trying to cross breed and just if our, if our focus is heterosis and not maximum production.

[C]

Yeah. So you know, one of the things what I was taught is, you know, heterosis really the benefit is there is a depression in several traits. When you breed relatively closely related animals, they don't have to be sired daughter type relate just same breed has enough shared genes that you actually depress some fertility traits is where it first shows up, but some growth traits and other things so that by outcrossing, going completely away from the gene pool, that has an advantage now. So that's what heterosis does. It kind of gets us back to it. It recovers any suppression we got from breeding closely, relatively closely related animals. So that, that's a good thing. And, and as you pointed out Philip, those different breeds bring a number of traits with them. And so there's also this breed complementarity where I want the combination of breeds to, to meet my goals. So I want, yes, to get some heterosis, some outbreeding, to get some recovery of fertility that I' but the breeds have to complement each other. And so a lot of that goes into the plan. So you kind of said it. How well can I manage the plan that I have for genetics with two breeds or three breeds or, or more than. And that's why a lot of times people like a two breed cross because it's probably the easiest to manage.

[B]

I'm not a geneticist, so my opinions on this are fairly basic. It does come down, I think, to how good is your record keeping system? How good are you at monitoring and measuring production traits? And what are the traits that matter most to you? And we all think of traits like weaning weight and mature cow weight and those are all important traits. At the end of the day, the trait that matters most to me is fertility in a cow calf operation. How good are you at getting cows pregnant year after year? And you know, I, I don't know that genetics plays as big of a role in that trait as just good management. So it's, it's not something to have strong opinions about. But I, I will say if you are going to try and select for certain traits and you need to have the tools in place to monitor and measure those traits accurately, and be able to link them back to the decisions that you make.

[A]

When we think at the high level, breed to breed differences can be large, but there are large differences within breeds. So when you say I'm reaching out to a specific breed to add into my third breed, it may depend on how similar or dissimilar that is to your existing cows as to whether that's a good decision or not. So I'm, I'm with you Todd. Looking at what traits am I trying to incorporate and where can I best get those? The other, the other flip side of the equation is I've seen herds that will have, start with a crossbred cow and then we breed to the same type of, same type of bull, same breedable over and over again. And eventually you're never a purebred herd, but you get pretty, having one breed, you can drift in that direction and that's what you want to avoid.

[D]

Yeah, and, and I was going to say too that, you know, we've, over the last 30 years we've had pretty similar targets for carcass quality, feedlot performance, other things like that. You know, when we think about different breeds those, the traits in those breeds are not as diverse as they once were. And so because we've, in each breed type, we're all striving for that same targets. And so the breeds have moved, in my opinion, they've moved somewhat closer together in a lot of traits. And so don't just think about crossing breeds, think about crossing individuals that, that are, that are diverse. That could bring you some heterosis.

[C]

You know, the last thing to think about and it's kind of a caution as you get more and more complicated because one of the reasons that you kind of like a two breed cross is you're kind of aiming for cows that are 50% genetics of one breed and 50 genetics the other breed. And kind of at, at Most you're around 2/3 of 1 breed and one third of another breed. And so you're, you've got an entire herd that kind of shares at least a third of the same breed. And so you get some, some similarities again in your, your outputs, your targets and things like that. When you add another breed, you have the potential to have cows within the same herd that have a pretty different breed makeup. And that may not be your goal because you want a consistent product. And so I think there are certainly producers that make a three breed rotation work really, really well. But I think they have to manage that added complexity.

[A]

It sometimes depends on the number of Cows and the number of breeding pastures that I have, and whether that's easy or really hard.

[C]

And so larger herds that kind of have a cow production subset and then a finished cattle subset can handle probably a little more breed diversity because they have some cattle that are really only going to be producing feeder cattle, whether it's steers or heifers. And then they're not. Then that breed is not part of my cows. They're just part of my calves. They're not a part of my cows. And that's where you see a three breed rotation work really well a lot of times.

[D]

Absolutely.

[A]

So good answers to that question, guys. And I want to shift topics and talk about. I saw an article that caught my eye and this was an article from 2024 that looked at prevalence of heart lesions in multiple species in the Czech Republic. And so this was one that we've talked about, heart disease in cattle. We've talked about heart disease in the feedlot scenario. But I thought this was interesting because they looked at, at animals at slaughter and I'll tell you the species that they looked at and some of the prevalences they found of heart disease and wanted to get your feedback or if this was expected or unexpected. So they looked at cows, heifers, bulls, calves, sows, finisher pigs, piglets, ewes, lambs, does and kids. And the highest prevalence of chronic heart disease they found was in piglets at about 14%. The next highest was in finisher pigs at about 8%, followed by adult cows and calves. But they found it in all those species that I listed. Is that what you guys expected or is that unexpected?

[C]

Well, it would be kind of interesting to dig into those reports a little bit more. But you know, the heart, this is an incredibly important organ. And yes, it, it can have a number of different ways. So heart disease is not one disease. You can have problems with the heart valves, you can have problems with the heart muscles. You'd have problems on the left side of the heart or the right side of the heart. You could have an infectious disease that infects either the heart or the sac around the heart. So heart disease is actually several pretty different diseases. And so it shouldn't really be surprising that we could have those types of problems. The other thing is the heart is, or the body is pretty good at adjusting, at least for a while. So these heart disease, the, what they found at slaughter didn't kill the animals. So the, the heart wasn't functioning at optimum levels, but the animal compensated and was able to survive and maybe Even do pretty well. So the heart is one of those things that the body has ability to compromise, compensate up at least until it gets really bad. And I, I think that's one, maybe one of the reasons why I'm not that surprised. There can be a lot of different causes of heart problems and the body does compensate as long as it can, but that's why. And sometimes it goes south really fast.

[A]

Some of the young ones, a little bit of a surprise to me. Todd, what about you?

[B]

Not terribly surprised. And a lot of the reason for that is, is it goes back to our previous conversation about breeding. What are the end points that we're selecting for? We're not selecting for food animals to become athletes. We're selecting them to get to a mature body weight and to a finishing composition of body weight as quickly as we possibly can. And so in that selection there's going to be a trade off. And it does not surprise me at all that that trade off might be at the expense of heart function.

[A]

Well, and I think, I think a couple things here, and Bob mentioned it, heart disease is complex. So one thing to think about in this paper, they just looked at the hearts. What we'd really want to know to how functional that heart was is looking at the liver, looking at some of the other organs because there are variations among normal. And we've looked at that in our necropsy projects the last several years. I think there's times that we don't always assess the heart as closely as we could. It was interesting to me in this paper that all life stages, both, both young and old, had heart changes they described as chronic. In this particular paper, they didn't really outline what that meant. Chronic heart changes. I assume that it was a change in the size or shape of that heart, but I don't, I don't really know. So I think it's, it's worth looking at. Interesting paper. Will, will follow up. So the next topic that we wanted to talk about and Dustin, I think this is one that we have a lot of discussion about back and forth, sometimes, not always on the podcast, but importing and exporting cattle. And recently this year we've talked a lot about New World Screw and how that has closed the, closed the border. I want to broaden this conversation a little bit and talk about just importing, exporting in general and what are the benefits to the cattle producer or detriments of importing cattle from out of country?

[E]

Yeah, there's a lot of discussion, I guess, if you will, on this topic and One of the negative aspects of importing cattle that you hear about is, you know, animal health. From an animal health perspective, we don't want to bring diseases this or that. I think that could be massed. I think that could be an excuse, right. If you can keep animals out of the country and it's going to lower the supply a little bit, put an upward pressure on prices at the cow calf level, as an example. So I think you can talk about cattle prices from a cow calf perspective, maybe a little higher. So that would be a benefit if I'm a cow calf producer. Now, on the other end of the spectrum of a consumer, I mean, that potentially translates to maybe higher beef prices and it wouldn't be a good thing if you're a beef consumer. So lots of lively discussion around this topic. And it, I guess it depends on where you fall in that, that beef supply chain, whether that's a good or maybe a bad thing.

[C]

Another thing that, that I want to look at is, is the health aspect in that, you know, the reason that the, the border with Mexico has been closed is because of New World screwworm that for many decades we had pushed that parasite south of Central America. Well, now it's into Central America and into Southern Mexico. And so I think there's some reasonableness to taking that seriously. Now another just kind of play devil's advocate with myself is maybe the least likely cattle to cross the border with this disease or any other are the ones that come through the inspection sites. And so they're inspected on the Mexican side of the border, they're reinspected on US Side of the border. There's a pretty, pretty stringent protocol that goes through. And if you close those inspected sites, if you want to look at maybe human nature from a negative standpoint, do you open up the probability that, that they're going to come across not inspected, that they're going to go across the border illegally? And so those are things sometimes our intentions don't always agree with what actually is going to happen. And so I could honestly, I think there's some reasonableness to closing the border, but I also can kind of agree that probably the least likely place for a disease to come across is at those inspected border points. So you could argue, I could argue.

[E]

Both sides, but we saw last month that we have the new World screw worm arrived in the US and it wasn't via.

[C]

It wasn't. But yeah, it was actually a human that brought it in.

[E]

And kind of comes back to your point is, yeah, those cows that come across the border are going to be some of the most heavily inspected animals. So I would also concur that I doubt that's where would come, you know.

[D]

But if I'm a cow calf producer and I'm selling calves to, to feed yards, I mean those cattle coming from Mexico, you know, reduce the supply. And so it helps on my side. It helps me or helps prices on my side of the, the equation. Because now if the border's closed. If the border's closed. Yeah. Because the feed yard. Feed yards, yeah. Feed yards got to fill pins and. And so now there's fear cattle that they can fill pens with.

[B]

I think in all of these types of discussions, it's important to remember that there are second order, third order and even more advanced effects to these decisions that we often don't see. And an example going back to the discussion about the feed yards, the feed yards does need. The feed yards do need to fill pens. And if they don't fill pens, if they aren't able to fill pens, then there's a chance that feed yard goes out of business. And if enough feed yard goes out of business and that erodes the ability of the industry to buy calves from the cow calf producer, which then makes life actually harder for the calf calf producer down the road. There are other components of that system that will then compensate for those losses and that will be felt up and down the supply chain. It can be very complex. But I think, I do think it's important to keep in mind that While I agree 100% that having fewer imports is going to in the short term raise the price of calves, it could actually have some unintended consequences down the road that we might not be able to foresee that could actually make things worse.

[C]

Short term benefits don't always become long term benefits.

[B]

In fact, if I had to put a generality on the relationship between those two, I would say that usually short term benefits erode the ability for us to have long term benefits. That seems to be the way life works.

[E]

And I mean, I think one thing you're. You're getting at me, but you didn't explicitly say this is. I mean, it's politics involved too. Right. So yes, we're talking cattle, but we might close the border of cattle, but then our border might be closed to beef or to pork or to cars or something else. And so there is this cycle.

[C]

I guess there's a lot of complexity to border politics.

[E]

Yeah.

[C]

And trade across borders.

[A]

So that, so that could impact our ability to export which exports have been an Important part of the price bolstering in the industry here because we've exported more and more over the last 10 years beef supply.

[E]

And I don't know exactly where we are today, but you know, in recent history we've been anywhere from what, 10 to 14, 15% of U.S. production has been exported. And what do we export? Well, we export a lot of things that we won't consume here in the United States, like livers and tongues and you know, other awful. And I think According to USMEF, I think about 425, $450 per head is result of export markets. And so it's not, you know, that's pretty sizable change.

[C]

Yeah, I think there's, there's a role for veterinarians to have an opinion based on animal health. There's a role for economists to have an opinion based on what's, what's good for the cattle industry in the U.S. but then, then you even step back and you say, well, trade of cattle isn't in a vacuum and that there's trade of basically everything becomes on the table. And so it is kind of. Todd was saying it's kind of hard to predict the future based on any one decision I make in that somebody else may make a decision that I wasn't expecting. And so I think from an animal health standpoint, I think we should look at New World Screwworm as a serious problem that we should put in our best controls possible. And that may involve opening the border, it may involve closing the border. But that, that decision from an animal health standpoint probably does have some, some repercussions that have nothing to do with animal health.

[A]

Yeah, the ramifications are big and as Todd said, sometimes short term and long term gain are not correlated the way we'd like them to be. The other thing that I would say is individual versus industry. So what's good for me may or may not be good for the entire industry. And we highlighted a couple of those things is we have segments of the industry which have, even those same industry have different economic drivers. So cow calf feedyard and packer being three big breaks that have slightly different drivers and each of which are affected a little bit differently as the border close. Is that right, Dustin? Yeah.

[E]

I mean, as Todd pointed out. Right. Your cow. If we're not allowing calves into the country, and that could be a good thing for one segment, such as maybe a cow calf producer. Right. But then if I'm a feed yard, I don't have calves put in my feed yard. If I'm a packer, I don't have calves to slaughter. And so everybody's going to be impacted or potentially could be impacted at a, maybe a different, different rate or even an opposite impact.

[A]

So when I hear this on the news as a cow calf producer, I think, I don't, I don't know what I should do with this information. So if I'm a cow calf producer and we have this discussion, we just debated back and forth pro and con. None of us has any control over it. Individual producers have very little control over that situation. So what do I do with this information? Just file it in. Hey, this is something big that could affect me and I have no control over. Or is there something I can do?

[C]

Well, the one thing you can do is be actively involved in, in your cattlemen's associations, in first of all, in the debate of what should policy be at state, national levels. And then the other thing. And I'll just. I've been around Dustin enough. Well, you do the things you can control, which is try to control your costs market well so that you get, kind of optimize the income that you're bringing in. And so you do control the things you can do. But this is, this is the role of belonging to organizations and making sure your voice is heard.

[E]

I know. I was going to say basically what Bob, he kind of took my thunder.

[A]

Yeah. Excellent. So well, thank you guys. Thanks for addressing that issue and the other questions. If you have a question or topic you'd like us to discuss, you can send us an email. Bcia, ksu Edge.