Robert G. Kauffman - Animal Science

WISCONSIN MEAT INDUSTRY HALL OF FAME
2004
Robert G. Kauffman
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Robert G. Kauffman
During Bob Kauffman’s 30-year tenure as the Atwood Professor of Animal Science at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, he influenced the career paths of many students and instituted
several innovative pedagogical methods of testing and coordinating learning for students. He
also contributed to the pork industry by helping define a fourth lean quality type and patenting a
method of improving color, water-holding capacity and tenderness in pork, beef, poultry and
lamb muscles.
Kauffman is a native of Princeton, Mo. and is currently managing the family farm there. He
obtained a bachelor’s degree in animal husbandry from Iowa State University, and master’s
(Animal Science-Agricultural Economics) and doctorate degrees (Animals ScienceBiochemistry) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Kauffman served in the United States Air Force, and then began his academic career in animal
science, first at the University of Illinois-Urbana and then at the UW-Madison. He was a visiting
scientist at the Research Institute of Animal Production, Zeist, The Netherlands in 1985. In
1995, after 30 years of teaching and conducting research, Kauffman retired from the animal
sciences department at UW-Madison. He currently holds the status of Emeritus Professor in that
department.
During his 35-year academic career, Kauffman had a profound effect on his students, the meat
science faculty at UW-Madison, and on business people in the state, national and international
meat industry. His enthusiastic personality and creative mind led to significant accomplishments
in academia and the meat industry.
Kauffman was an innovative teacher and an effective coordinator of learning. During his career
he coordinated and taught in five department courses, and guest lectured in many others. It is
estimated that his teaching efforts were involved in 20,000 student credit hours, and he advised
approximately 500 undergraduates, supervised 13 Ph.D. candidates, and 20 M.S. students.
He developed the “Meat-Animal Evaluation Approach” to evaluating livestock, providing a
competitive program for animal science students at the community college and university level.
This approach focused on the evaluation of market animals, breeding animals and carcasses in an
organized and collective pedagogical environment. From the 1960s until his retirement,
Kauffman coordinated annual student meat-animal evaluation competitions—the Wisconsin
Meat-Animal Evaluation Triathlon, and a national contest, the Ak-Sar-Ben Meat-Animal
Evaluation Contest in Nebraska. Approximately 10,000 students participated in these events
under Kauffman’s leadership.
In addition, Kauffman initiated the “Academic Quadrathlon,” a four-part competition testing the
knowledge and skills of teams of animal, dairy and poultry science students. Teams compete in
written exams, public presentations, lab practical exercises and quiz bowls. The program was so
popular that it spread from the UW-Madison campus to agricultural colleges across the country.
Today winning teams compete at the various sectional annual meetings of the American Society
of Animal Sciences. To date, more than 15,000 students from 50 colleges have participated in
these events.
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One of Bob Kauffman’s outstanding teaching accomplishments, and one which had closest
association with the meat industry and preparing students to work in it, was his “Livestock and
Meat Marketing” course. This course was annually limited to 12 students, utilized many
conference calls with industry leaders throughout the U.S., featured a whirl-wind three-day field
trip around the Midwest to visit various industry operations and required students to work in
teams for much of the semester to address major industry problems. The results of many of
those projects continue to provide valuable insights into historical and current meat industry
situations.
During his tenure at UW-Madison, Kauffman conducted extensive research on meat animal
composition and quality. He conducted seminars for pork industry groups in 15 states and 10
foreign countries. During sabbatical studies in The Netherlands, he discovered a fourth definable
lean quality type in pork—red, soft and exudative (RSE) lean. He was the leader of a research
team at the university that patented the use of sodium bicarbonate to improve color, tenderness
and water-holding capacity in meat by its infusion into pre-rigor muscles.
Kauffman also led the development of three meat science bulletins which are used around the
world: “Porcine Myology,” “Ovine Myology” and “Guidelines to Evaluate Market Hog
Performance and Meat Quality.” In addition he has contributed five chapters to meat science
texts, produced 10 films and recorded 12 video tapes related to Animal and Meat Science.
Robert Kauffman has had a career marked by excellence in teaching of meat science, positively
influencing the students he has contacted, creatively providing new and stimulating methods of
learning, and discovering and communicating important information about meat animal
composition and quality to students, colleagues and the meat industry. For these most significant
accomplishments, Bob Kauffman is highly deserving of induction into the Wisconsin Meat
Industry Hall of Fame.
Kauffman is married to Phyllis Ann Smith. They have two daughters, Rebecca (and Richard
Henly) and Ellen, and two grandsons, Alexander and Ian Campbell.
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