While Pickles the steer is chilling in the ISU Meat Lab, the controversy surrounding who he was is just starting to heat up. The champion at the Iowa State Fair’s 4-H market steer competition, shown by 4-H member Jenna Sievers of New Liberty, is at the center of a debate over bovine identity and exhibitor integrity.

After Pickles was declared the 4-H champion, a nose print taken when Sievers registered her steer project in December 2001 was compared against a print taken at the fair, and subsequently fair officials decided that the prints came from different steers. Similar to human fingerprints, cattle noseprints are unique identifiers.

However, the 4-H livestock show at the Iowa State Fair does not require noseprinting as identification, relying instead upon eartags. Thus, the damning evidence against Pickles is simply that more records were kept on the steer than required by the 4-H livestock show, and those records, which do not uniformly exist for all competitors, are the standards used by fair officials to discredit Jenna Sievers and Pickles.

While fair officials moved to strip Pickles of the championship title, the Sievers family sought an injunction from a Des Moines judge, allowing Jenna to sell Pickles at the Sale of Champions, for $16,000. Twenty percent of the money is returned to a scholarship pool for exhibitors; the champion exhibitor takes the rest home. In Sievers’ case, the money is held in escrow until the identity of Pickles is established.

The Pickles controversy raises several questions for livestock show coordinators and organizations like 4-H and FFA to ponder.

First, are the high premiums available for top exhibitors too enticing, thus tempting exhibitors to break the rules? Second, are more stringent and uniform rules governing livestock identity warranted to prevent controversy rather than showmanship becoming the top story of the 4-H show?

If Jenna Sievers registered and showed the same steer for her 4-H project, winning the championship at the Iowa State Fair, she should be enjoying her achievement and putting her auction proceeds in the bank. If the fair board is correct and Sievers did swap steers in an attempt to gain advantage in the show, she and her parents should be sanctioned from 4-H events in the future. If parents see something better out in the feedlot and aid and abet a trade, the learning process intended in the 4-H project is circumvented for a premium. Fair officials should seriously consider implementing mandatory noseprinting or other sophisticated identification systems to curb the occurrence of such controversy.

While the fate of Jenna Sievers’ showmanship reputation and hefty championship premium hang in the balance, Pickles’ fate was that of every other 4-H market steer. Hamburger.