Press Release

[perfecho]

On the producer owned packer, I still maintain that the shares should be partially producer owned, however I believe much more success would come of it if the majority were consumer owned.
With our "local initiative", I am amazed at how many people are willing to step up, how many do want a change. With a little education and marketing, I believe it could be done. (Preferably with a "local" theme instead of one mega plant.)
The beauty of having consumers involved, there is “buy in” and it would be much more difficult for the "Monopoly" to play their games.
I do think that had some of the "failed" packing endeavors included a majority of "consumers", their fate would have been different.
Granted, this would not deal with all of the export beef, but just think if the "local market" was serviced by this type of endeavor, Cargill and Nilsson would have to compete and concentrate more on export.

[kato]

Exactly.

It seems the only thing that ever gets the attention of this government is either a big election scare, or a lot of noise. Polite doesn't do it. We're too small in numbers to get any attention unless we do something out of proportion. We need a bigger group to raise the level, and we know it's not going to be current players who are already doing just fine. We need consumers behind us before anyone will listen.

The fact is that consumers have almost as much to lose as we do here, but they don't know it. Yet. It's our job to let them know how precarious the supply of Canadian beef really is.

The government, and BEF, and CCA are justified in getting that warm fuzzy feeling when they open up a new market, but in the real world they are forgetting the fact that while they are out doing that job, we are at home going out of business. All the export markets in the world don't help if there are no cattle left to sell. We need to find a way to hit them over the head with this fact, so they wake up.

Mr. Ritz.....First make sure there is a Canadian cow herd left, before you congratulate yourself for opening markets for the beef. You've only done half the job.

If we were on sounder financial footing, and thought there was a future, we'd all be more willing to take another go at producer owned plants. You can't invest money you don't have. That's just my opinion.

[grassfarmer]

How do we get the mainstream consumer masses to assist us in something like pushing for a Government inquiry without them expecting a major reduction in retail beef price as a reward? Nobody answered that part of my post. I know how to do it on a one to one basis as customer/supplier but beyond that I don't know.

Disappointing to see ABP not taking a leadership role in this by the way. My resolution for them to lobby Government for an inquiry, well supported at my local meeting, wasn't even presented to the AGM delegates. It got the sideways shuffle to a committee to be reviewed at some unknown, unspecified time in the future. Guess it wasn't important enough to waste time on - although by all accounts there wasn't very much of any more importance discussed.

[jensend]

you're right grassfarmer the consumer will expect some price relief if they're being told they're being gouged. if the market was functioning properly it would determine what the price was. we should be satisfied if that happens and so should they. if the beef price were to drop too far it would force more producers out but that process would be preferable to what we have now where producers are going broke because the market isn't functioning. at least those left would have a future.

[kato]

I think they're wise enough to see that if we are all in the tank, and what little competition there is left in the system is in the tank, that the price of beef is going to go up, not down.

If things deteriorate to the point that one of the big packers leaves, and there is only one left, they will have no more choice in what they pay for beef than we will have in what we get for cattle. And if one of they big packers does threaten to leave, there is also a very good chance that they will be on the hook for the subsidies that said packer will demand in corporate welfare/blackmail.

There is a tipping point here. Sure they can buy cheaper imported beef for a while, but then they must realize that their food supply is no longer under Canadian control. If the day came that the dollar dropped to the levels we've seen in the past, the price of food will go up accordingly. And once the Canadian beef supply is out of Canadian control, it's going to be a lot harder to get back than it would be to keep it here in the first place.

A society that adopts a policy of bankrupting it's primary food producers is a doomed society.

[wd40]

Jen - "How do we get the mainstream consumer masses to assist us in..... Nobody answered that part of my post".

In my already stated opinion, the way to get the consumers onboard is to get an investment position (BUT NOT CONTROL)from the likes of Jimmy Patison and his 3 grocery chains, the Fed. CoOP and their stores, and Michael McCain and his market outlets, Sobey's chain of IGA's, and many more.

And again any endevour has to be big enough to have enough volume of all the hard to sell pieces.

Lets not get bogged down in the how too's! The devel is in the detail. We need to focus on the WHY too's. And hire the people with the How too's.

The right plan will spark a little smoke, which can be fanned into some fire, which would creat enough draft to make a bon-fine, then the govt. will wake up. (who needs them, except to fix the #$%^$#@ regulations) which will ahppen with puplic outcry. They only listen to numbers.

[smcgrath76]

I have been thinking about this some and
I think the food supply approach may be
the less important one in a country
where a smaller and smaller portion of
disposable income is spent on food.
I think an important tact to take is
that without us the landscape and
environment will be managed by corporate
entities and policies that don't really
care about communities, environmental
qualities, etc. I think the currency of
the debate with the public needs to step
outside of the boundaries of $ and who
gets what (a pi$$ing match) and into the
core values of the consumer (family,
community, environment, connection to
the land, etc).

[kato]

I think they're more in the mood for that now than ever before. Every time a million pound meat recall comes out, it pushes them a bit farther. Every time they see a documentary like food inc., or the one we saw a couple of weeks ago about Monsanto, the appetite for a corporate run food supply drops another notch.

In the consumer's eye, what would be the answer to giant corporations supplying their food? We and other farmers would be. That's who.

Read through the comments on that CBC site that picked up grassfarmer's story, and you can see it. Where a story like that used to attract a lot of negative vegetarian/environmentalist rhetoric, it is now attracting regular every day people who are fed up with the food system as it stands today.

The mood is out there, and if we are smart, we should work with it.

[grassfarmer]

Sean, one caution with going on the environmental angle is that many consumers and activists may have different views than us on land/environment and stewardship. They may want to pay us to shape the countryside to their liking - and that may mean removing the cows. This has happened in Europe quite a bit.

[smcgrath76]

good thoughts. My primary concern is that
we don't get bogged down in a strict fight
over $ and who gets them. That makes us
look as bad as government to many
consumers. We need to keep the fight
about supporting values.