The Veterinarian at the Chute in the Oklahoma City Stockyards

On sale days at the stockyards in Oklahoma City, thousands of cattle move through the pens and alleys before heading out to pastures, feedlots and dinner tables across the country. But before they go anywhere, they pass by Dr. Troy Shelby.

Shelby graduated from the Oklahoma State University College of Veterinary Medicine in 1989 and has worked livestock markets across the state, including Tulsa, Vinita, Welch, Durant. He's been the veterinarian at the livestock auction in Ada for 30 years, and at the Oklahoma City stockyards for about 15.

His job sits at a spot most Oklahomans never see but every one of us depends on. Shelby and his crew individually identify the cattle that federal and state rules require, age cows by looking at their teeth, pregnancy-check heifers by ultrasound, and inspect animals to make sure they're healthy before they leave the yards or cross state lines.

"We're just kind of frontline in ensuring that the animals are healthy that come through, and also don't have drug residues," he says.

That last part matters more than most of us realize. Those individual IDs make it possible to trace an animal back to its source if a disease or a residue ever shows up. Strict withdrawal periods make sure cattle treated with antibiotics don't enter the food chain until it's safe. It's the same system that helped eradicate brucellosis, a disease that once threatened both cattle and people.

It's why Shelby and veterinarians like him are watching the New World screwworm cases in Texas so closely right now and inspecting cattle coming north, looking for anything suspicious. He's quick to point out the good news: screwworm is treatable, and it doesn't affect food safety.

The work itself is hot, cold, physical and occasionally dangerous. Shelby hires his own crew at every barn he works — one man horseback, one pulling cattle from the pens, one at the computer, the same man aging cattle by their teeth so the calls stay consistent.

"When you find a good hand, you sure want to keep them," he says. 

Finding help, he'll tell you, is the hardest part of the job these days. But it's not what worries him most.

The national cattle herd is the smallest it's been since the 1950s. Extended drought, an aging generation of producers, ranches divided up and sold, and the sheer cost of getting started have all taken their toll.

"Someone said if you weren't born into this business, it's hard to get into it," Shelby says. "Land is so expensive, and all the inputs — the fuel, the feed. You'd have to have a heck of a banker to back you."

The same squeeze has hit his own profession. Rural Oklahoma is losing large animal veterinarians faster than it can replace them. Shelby serves on the veterinary medical authority board at OSU, where the state has appropriated more than $300 million for a new teaching hospital, and he points to scholarships that pay young veterinarians to commit to underserved rural areas. His son just graduated with one of them.

Both of his boys are in the cattle business. Which might explain his answer when you ask what gives him hope.

"There's a lot of people involved in agriculture that just have that heart, that love for agriculture, and they're going to do it through thick or thin," he says. "If you've got people with a love and passion for something like that, they're going to find a way."

Ask him to describe Oklahoma food in three words and he doesn't hesitate long: wholesome, quality, pride.

"Anything from farming to growing pecans to raising cattle, I think people really take pride in what they produce," he says. "It's good quality, and it's safe and wholesome."

Oklahomans tell us they trust the food grown and raised here. That trust doesn't happen by accident. It's built by people like Dr. Troy Shelby, standing at the chute in the heat and the cold, making sure every animal that leaves the yards is healthy, traceable and safe so that when your family sits down to an Oklahoma-raised meal, you don't have to think twice.

That's the promise behind Oklahoma All for Food. And it has a face.