Rumor or just a nightmare?

[grassfarmer]

I heard a disturbing rumor today - that Cargill and Nilssons are in negotiations to transfer the High River plant to Nilsson ownership. Has anyone else heard this - if so surely this couldn't be allowed by the competition bureau?

[jensend]

haven't heard anything but at the ssga meeting in june brian nilsson said they wanted to kill every slaughter animal in canada. i wondered how many people there stopped to think what that really meant. some of us have thought if this is true it is what nilssons have been working towards.

[wd40]

that's been obvious for a long time

[perfecho]

Also have heard that although cows are leaving, grass rental is impossible to find....Nilson is renting.......are all those cows going to slaughter?

[ivbinconned]

They have been buyibg 95% of the culls and bulls out of Saskatoon!

[blackjack]

To me it doesn't make economical sense why Nilsson's would want to own the cow on the ranch.Sooner or later that cow does have to come to town and when your in control of marketing or processing let the rancher take the risk on the ranch.

[blackjack]

If the rumor is true there is one obvious conclusion.Packers do make money.

[kato]

Rumours are funny things. If one like this got going strong, even if it wasn't true, it would accelerate the end of the cattle business as we know it in this country. If enough people believed that our future held a market where there was only one place to sell slaughter animals, it wouldn't take long for there to be only enough animals left to keep one plant going.

A self fulfilling prophecy.

If we personally were faced with such a future, we'd either get right out, or cut back to the point where we could market our own beef. And in that future, people in the cities and towns would face the prospect of only being able to buy what that one processor offered at whatever price they chose to sell at, or if they were lucky, they'd know a cattle producer personally and get their beef direct.

Thinking about that for a bit, I think consumers have as large a stake in this situation as we have. Not only would we be stuck in the position of having only one place to sell, consumers would be stuck in the position of having only one place to buy, assuming they care if they have Canadian beef.

I think they do care, but I also think that they have no idea how precarious a situation we are in here.

It comes back to the same idea, that these problems can only be solved by involving consumers right along side us.

[per]

What if it is true? Maybe that new reality will affect some positive change. (use all available imagination here) The tank we are floating in has little water and plenty of algae.

[smcgrath76]

Grass for cows might just be because there
are too many to kill right now. Need to
stretch the inventory a bit.
I could see High River exiting, despite
it's relatively low procurement cost.
Running at only 70% with a dwindling
supply of cattle is not the recipe to use
a facility efficiently. Labour costs are
much lower south of the border as well.

[ivbinconned]

Kato...western Canadian grain fed beef versus of shore...Jack and Olivia Chow and the people they represent don't know the difference!

Years ago when my Toroto relatives came to visit and we fed them our home grown grain fed beef...their reraction was "what is this"?

Some care maybe but not the majority...cheap is what matters.

[wilagro]

ivbiconned is right...we have excellent beef. The best beef that I ever ate came from our own animals.

The worst had to be from some scraggly Mexican critter down in Acapulco.

[kato]

My husband's niece worked as a nurse in Corpus Christie Texas, and Tuscon Arizona for a few years. Prime cattle country, right? Not according to them. They said they had to come home to get a good steak.

We should be taking a very proactive approach to educate consumers about what is going on with their food supply. If they don't know the difference between our beef and some old grasser from South America, then it's up to us to show them.

I really do think that High River is the next big worry. If things are as bad as they are now, what are they going to be like if we are down to essentially one buyer? Nasty, that's what.

I can see one scenario that would be fairly acceptable. That would be for Nillsons to buy Cargill's facilities, on the condition that they sell theirs at Moose Jaw and Brooks to some other entity, preferably one with some producer direction. And better than that, to TWO entities. It's either that, or we're all in deep trouble.

[grassfarmer]

Too many cows to kill Sean? I was talking to an auction mart owner yesterday who was remarking how well the cow price was holding up - he reckoned they must be pretty current with inventory. They can't be short of kill capacity though or Moose Jaw wouldn't remain closed.

Yes Per just imagine what change this might bring about - would producers finally get mad enough to blockade High River like they did in Quebec? Keep it up until the plant was turned over to a group like Sawbones is involved with?

[per]

Mon français est un peu faible mais je suis disposé à parler un peu pour ce genre de producteur ferver.