Youth for the Quality Care of Animals (YQCA)

Youth for the Quality Care of Animals (YQCA) is a national multi-species quality assurance program for youth ages 8 to 21. An in-person YQCA workshop requires complete attendance.

YQCA is the result of a collaborative effort between states that have previously offered multi-species youth livestock quality assurance programs, the National Pork Board’s Youth PQA Plus program and representatives from other national livestock groups.

YQCA is designed as an annual education and certification program focused on food safety, animal well-being and character awareness for youth ages 8 to 21 producing and/or showing pigs, beef cattle, dairy cattle, sheep, goats, market rabbits, and poultry. The program has been designed by extension specialists and national livestock program managers to ensure it is accurate, current and relevant to the needs of the animal industry and shows and is appropriate for youth.

IN VIRGINIA, the online training certification is not accepted.

YQCA emerged from the discussion of state youth livestock leaders with representatives of national livestock organizations. There was a growing concern about the amount of effort required for each group to maintain an accurate and engaging curriculum to provide youth quality assurance training. The National Pork Board’s Youth PQA program was the first national program and many subsequent trainings were modeled from it. Some states had created multi-species programs to include youth showing animal other than pigs into one training. University of Nebraska Extension had developed an online training platform to meet training requirements for youth in areas where workshops were not available. All of these parties discussed the development of a single, national, multi-species program that could leverage the best of everyone’s efforts. These meetings culminated in 2015 with the decision to work together and establish a new non-profit organization, Youth for the Quality Care of Animals, that developed and offered a training and certification program with the same name. YQCA was founded in fall of 2016 and the program was launched in March 2017.

The YQCA organizational Board of Directors, as well as Virginia Cooperative Extension adopted the following goals for the YQCA training and certification program:

• Ensure safety and well-being of animals produced by youth for showing and for 4-H and FFA projects
• Ensure a safe food supply to consumers
• Enhance the futhre of livestock industry by educating youth on these very important issues so they can become more informed producers, consumers and/or employees in the agriculture and food industry
• Maximize the limited development time and budgets of state and national youth program leaders to provide an effective quality assurance program
• Offer livestock shows a valid, national quality assurance certification for youth livestock exhibitors

The YQCA curriculum is broken into four levels: Junior ages 8-11, Intermediate ages 12-14, Senior ages 15-18 and Young Adult ages 19-21. Three or four levels of content focused on food safety, animal well-being and character are outlined for each level. Topics include but are not limited to: The Basics of Animal Identification, Daily Animal Care, Administering Animal Health Products, Providing Quality Care, Herd Health Plan, Providing Quality Feed, Sharing The Story, Goals To Success, and Ethics In The Show Ring.

In addition to the content being crafted at appropriate age levels, each curriculum topic is accompanied by specific educational objectives to guide the learning process. These objectives outline the key concepts and skills youth are expected to master following their participation in the appropriate level of the program.