Even if?

[rkaiser]

So --- even if we did have a real beef value chain in this country where profits trickled down in a relative and recognisable way from retail or even packer to producer, would any of you support a protectionist attitude?

Food has become a global commodity and I do not think we are going to turn the trend around in my life time; even though I have a lot of respect for those who produce and market local food and 100 mile diets.

Our company is directing our attention on large export markets and as far as I am concerned, the domestic consumer who has been trained by our faulty food chains into expecting cheap food can buy his or her beef from the Cargill/ South American / Aussie / cheap raised American beef chain or the profit driven implant infested Canadian feeders who have little or no respect for the producer or the consumer.

All about choice.

How about your opinions?

[ASRG]

Randy
Personally I don't want to eat SA or Aussie beef.
I'm old enough to remember the days when the feds let in a bunch of cheap subsidized Irish cow beef, because prices were getting a bit high at the meat counter......completely destroyed our cull cow prices! The Irish subsidy was more than what the cow was worth!
Some of the beef you get in this country is nothing to write home about, but hopefully our food inspection agency gives us a safe product?
I seldom eat beef in a restaurant or buy from a store.....no consistancy....tough old boot one day....tasty steak the next! I do eat my own beef....I know it has no hormones or antibiotics....and yes it is grassfed!
I think you are doing the right thing chasing a high end market for a high end product.

[grassfarmer]

I think it is faulty business logic pursuing a foreign
market. Can't you see that your beef in a foreign
market will always be viewed like ASRG views the
Aussie or S. American product?
So I say yes to protectionism - but protectionism
through making Canadian consumers want nothing
but the best Canadian beef, supplied by us.

The problem with chasing foreign markets is that
there are always others doing the same and a
domestic industry in those countries opposing you.
Here are a couple of articles out of a Scottish farm
paper on two of this weeks issues - The Harvard
anti-beef study and the N. America/EU trade change
proposal re hormone implanted beef. Can you see
the similarities to here? Everyone claims they have
the best in the world, that other countries are
desperately waiting to buy your exports and at the
same time dismissing your competitors product as
inferior.

1 "THERE IS no good reason for UK consumers to eat
any less red meat – so long as it is good UK-
produced red meat.

Responding to the latest food scare story to sweep
the national media, industry leaders this week urged
consumers not to be swayed by unscientific
conclusions based on America’s system of
intensively-fed cattle being eaten by equally
intensively fed humans.

The story began with the publication of a long-term
lifestyle study of 120,000 American men and
women, who were tracked for almost 30 years by
the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

The Harvard study reached the conclusion that, of
the 24,000 subjects who died over the course of the
study, between 7.6% and 9.3% of them could have
lived longer if they had eaten half a helping less red
meat each day.

Quality Meat Scotland, along with other UK health
and nutrition experts, have since challenged these
claims, and the scientific basis of the links forged by
the Harvard study’s authors – while other, more
radical, commentators have alleged that the media
had once again taken a bait prepared for them by
the animal welfare and vegetarian lobbies..."

2. "HOPES WERE raised this week that Scotch beef
could soon make a return to the United States
market – and in doing so boost exports of lamb
across the Atlantic.

The new optimism followed the publication of a
draft law in the US which could result in the
Americans lifting the ban on British exports put in
place in 1997 at the height of the BSE scare.

A Quality Meat Scotland spokesman welcomed this
“positive development” which moved the US a step
closer to adopting internationally accepted
standards of meat quality and assurance – standards
under which Scotch beef leads the world."

[ag-boy]

yes choices !
RKAISER protectionist attitude has a
little respect in our free beef commodity.
YOU have that free choice to get that plant going and show us better returns yet in this high BEEF return we all enjoy !

With no tax payers money input or share ,s of Beefproducers commitment!
Sample we have what happend with Canada gold beef .
This plant is killing sheep to recover some cost to bad !!!!
There is room for Natural raised BEEF ! misleading with ORGANIC BEEF
what is already on the mind of the
housewife in CANADA and the large EURO
country.

[BTO_farmall]

Kizzer's All Natural Meats & Sons Wants To Have His Cake & Eat it To!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!