Borders closed or what?

[carebear300]

Will that country or origin labelling requirement for all meat going into the american market hurt us big time because of the mad cow disease? I hope not but think that it will for quite some time.

[lonewolf]

cakadu I attended an information session two or three years ago when BSE was in the spot light last time. the government handed out some information packets which I think I still have someplace. At that time they informed us that if Mad cow was to be found here the best case senario would be a closure of the border for two years. I do not think it will go that long but if it does I have all ready been taking steps to hold cattle for that period. Will I lose money on them. definitely, but these cattle will eventually go to market. One final note the guys that have had their herds quarrantined will probably fair better then the rest of us as the government did give us a price a guarrenteed price per cow should BSE be found in the herd.

[ValueChainFX]

At the moment I do believe the question is why did it take so long to find the problem. If you were in the countries that imported our product, what would you think? What do you think a reasonable time would be?

[ALICIA]

Sorry What can I say
selective hearing
selective reading

[cakadu]

Part of the reason it took so long to find the problem was the cow likely wasn't a priority because she wasn't in the human food chain but rather was condemned hence went for rendering.

It also depends on how many people are employed to look for these types of diseases.

Bottom line is that once the borders are open, it is going to take some time in order to restore confidence in what we are doing. I could be wrong, but I don't think it is going to be a matter of opening the border one day and we will be trading like we were before anything happened. So long as we keep moving forward, that will be the main thing.

[ValueChainFX]

If we are regulated to follow food safe rules and use the inspection system, my question is; "Why do they not have the staff to handle the inspection service?" We have known the system is under pressure with the elk testing that is going on and we are still short of people! The challenge is at the government level, we can do some things to take some of the pressure off, but we need to have input and cooperation from the government to do this.

The cow not going into food chain, used as an excuss for the time lapse does not hold water here! We know the importance (especially now) of making sure our product is safe and our herds clean. This is a question now of handling these types of challenges in a timely manner. The US is not going to shruge their shoulders and say "Oh we understand you are understaffed, or we understand it is not important because the cow was not in the food chain." Like us we want to know imported product food, pet food, fertalizer or anything else does not risk our agriculture industry.

What is the solution? Industry needs to figure this one out, all I can say is we as an industry need to put in place our own checks and balances and work WITH the government to make this happen.

Your solution thoughts?

[ALICIA]

On Agriculture Online (American web) top stores - Dog food recall- Champion pet food,Morinville,Alb. may of sold dog food to Carson City,Neveada- Feb 4 to March 12 recall.

USA may open the boarder in Eastern Canada soon if no more mad cows. They are hopping for boarder open soon also.

[cakadu]

Playing devils advocate here, if we were to take the logic one step further about knowing our herds are clean, then it would presume that any animal that is condemned should be tested and tested before any others, in other words become the priority. Who would pay for that? How many pathologists would we need for that and where are we going to get them all?

[ValueChainFX]

cakadu good devils advocate, but we are talking about a Canadian industry that requires regulation to stay in the world market. The cost of the industry being closed far exceeds the cost of making the system work to meet the world demands. Every horse that is processed in Canada requires lab tests. These are done right in the plant and we supplied the techs(the plant). They were trained for these tests by the government and had to be monitored, but we had a front line defense.

I believe that if we made this a priority we could do much the same thing in the beef industry. If we are regulated we must find a way to make the system work. It is a cost of doing business.

If we had this in our system now. What would be the reasons to keep the boarders closed today? We would have caught this sooner, and the questions would be less damaging.

[rip]

This is definatly a time of uncertainty but one thing is for sure...we will not recover from this overnight. Even if the borders reopen there is going to be a gear up time and we have definatly lost some of our US markets for a while. Therre will be a drop in the value of our product because the buyers now have an excuse to pay us less. However from the word around the world we have still got their confidence that this is an issolated case. They are more worried that if we could get it so can they as we are doing more testing than is required by international standards ( more than most BSE free countries) and about the same as the US.
Our big problem right now is getting the fat cattle slaughtered right now within the feedlots and finding a place for them... our only market right now is our domestic one... can we eat 50,000 head a week? thats 3 pounds to every 1 we eat now...the price is going to drop... the good side to this is that it will now make it more attractive to the processers who were buying imported to now use our product and once we get them back using it they may not be as willing to shift back.
We do not want to shut our borders to product coming in...it is very hard to open borders by closing them...the marketplace will look after that.. the big thing right now is keeping our feedlots alive so there is someone there to buy our calves and grain this fall.
I think that we can expect the border to be closed for another 2 weeks at least unless our illustrious leader pokes Bush in the eye again and says something else to tick him off...he isnt helping.
Long and short is that we are in the middle of the worst disaster that has hit the ag business in Canadian history , we will lose some herds, we will lose some feedlots, but I am confident that we will pull through, but lets not kid ourselves... there WILL be some major changes within our industry and I truly believe that when it is all done we will have a better system and a product that the rest of the world is going to know is the safest anywhere... the big thing is getting us back in the marketplace as soon as possible