Last August at the Cattlemen's Summer Convention in Orlando there was a motion from the floor to establish a new structure for the nominating committee of the Cattlemen's Beef Board. Up until now there really wasn't any set structure in the bylaws for a nominating committee, although there was a practice in place. That motion was narrowly defeated last year, but led to a motion to study and revise the entire bylaws. A special committee was appointed by Cattlemen's Beef Board Chairman Wesley Grau, and Joe Guthrie from Dublin, Va., was asked to chair the committee, and have changes ready for consideration at the 2012 Cattlemen's Convention.

"One of the revisions that we propose is a nominating committee structure," Guthrie said. "We've looked at a lot of different alternatives, we've received a lot of input from members, and have incorporated some of those ideas into the proposal."

The changes to the bylaws were approved by the full Cattlemen's Beef Board on Thursday. The new structure would be a nominating committee of eight people consisting of a non-voting chairman, six members would be chosen from six different regions around the country, and one would be appointed by the chairman.

"So we're looking at a little bit more democratic process than what we've had," Guthrie said. "Members will be choosing the nominating committee structure and also giving the chairman an opportunity to place someone on that committee as well."  

Guthrie says the proposal changes the practice that has been place of the chairman appointing the nominating committee and attempts to have different representatives from all different regions of the country.

In addition to the nominating structure changes to the bylaws, which was the main impetus for revision, some archaic language was deleted and some minor changes that Guthrie says have both updated the bylaws, making them more relevant for today, and also taken out some things that were either unnecessary or potentially harmful for the organization.

"We feel that like the entire document is very beneficial to the overall structure of the Cattlemen's Beef Board," Guthrie said.