Do we really even know what we've done?

[farmers_son]

What rubbish. Lets get real here... CCA has been sending people to Geneva for the WTO talks for years trying to get trade open with the EU and the world. It is not CCA's fault the WTO talks fell through.

But it needs to be pointed out that our Federal government steadfastly refused to budge on reducing Canada's tariffs protecting milk and eggs and this lack of resolve to open trade was a contributing factor in the talks collapsing. But if we are going to play the blame game the U.S. Europe, India and China were mostly to blame for the failure of the crucial WTO talks.

See:
http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/jul/29wto2.htm

Also see the India perspective:
http://www.blonnet.com/2006/07/02/stories/2006070202900300.htm

"Meanwhile, the rich nations are bickering among themselves. For instance, even as the EU agreed to drop farm export subsidies by 2013, "the US, where Congress is fiercely opposed to agriculture liberalisation, believes that Europe's move does not go far enough to merit a reciprocal reduction in its own subsidies," as www.eupolitix.com informs in a report dated June 29. The EU, for its part, wants focus on freer trade in services such as IT, finance and transport. It is argued that subsides by the rich nations to their farmers can "promote poverty in developing countries by driving agricultural prices below what third world farming industries can compete with," as http://en.wikipedia.org notes.

Though subsidies are a drain of taxpayers' money, subsidy cuts are a vexing problem even for the developed world. For, any move to do so can result in a backlash from the local farmers. Ditto with tariff cuts."

It needs to be noted that there is a large black market trade within Europe for cattle implants. While officially hormone free the reality is quite different.

It also needs to be noted that the EU is actively discussing new trade barriers involving animal welfare. So even if we produce the hormone free steer the EU will simply find another way to block trade from North America.

[Sawbones]

FS It may just be that the EU are not trying to block imports but actually want beef that can be verified hormone free and raised humanely.
My main beef (sorry for the pun) with CCA is that you can't legislate someone into buying your product. That's the same fault with ABP and their 5 million dollar slush fund to fight MCOOL. Let the feds look after the political legal matters and maybe we should concentrate on getting a high end product to potential consumers who are willing to pay for a better product.

[farmers_son]

I thought I would follow through on my statement that there is a large black market for hormones in the EU by including a link that backs up that statement:

http://www.bsas.org.uk/about_the_bsas/issue_papers/hormone_growth_promoters_in_cattle/

Begin of Paste

"Effectiveness of the Ban:

Opponents of the ban [on hormones in cattle] argued that controlled use of implants was preferable to the black market that would inevitably follow a ban. So it has proved. A criminal black market in hormone products developed from bases in Belgium. Unscrupulous farmers implanted cattle in unusual sites, e.g. under the skin of the tail, to try and conceal the implants. This raised the risk of whole implants inadvertently entering the human food chain.

Worse still, farmers turned to other undesirable products, notably ?agonists such as clenbuterol administered as a feed additive. These products have a legitimate role in veterinary medicine but are not licensed in the EU for growth promotion.

The ?agonists have remarkable effects on the lean content of the carcass to an extent that conformation becomes more muscular which raises the sale price per kg of carcass. However, ?agonists have the highly detrimental characteristic of making beef tough and powdered formulations present risks to operators, and there have been reports of toxicity in consumers caused by residues in beef liver.

Illegal use was probably never significant in Great Britain but was rampant in European feedlots and in Ireland clenbuterol gained the doubtful sobriquet 'angel dust'. It is uncertain to what extent illegal use persists but it is probably much less now than in the years immediately following implementation of the ban.

There is no pressure within the EU to reverse the ban. The matter has passed beyond science into consumer and trade politics."

[grassfarmer]

F_S, could you provide a date of publication of that article you posted and what time period it was debating?
I remember the clenbuterol feedlot in Ireland scandal and it was around 1990 if I remember right.

[farmers_son]

The article was prepared for British Society for Animal Science by Dr David Allen, Beef Industry Consultant. I believe it would have been written in 2008. If you note the article does say the problem was never prevalent in the UK although certainly was prevalent in the rest of Europe. While illegal use persists it would likely be less prevalent today.


I point I was trying to make is the hormone bans were at least partly based on protectionism. In fairness the attitudes about hormone use in Europe were also partly based on some bad experiences with DES which I remember we used on calves when I was a kid and it was a bad product.

[rkaiser]

Just one more damn good reason for us to use the class action money wisely. We will never get all cattle producers to agree on much of anything. Therefore, those of us who "want" to lead the blind "will lead the blind. There are markets all over the world and in our own countries cities for quality beef. We simply have to find them and supply them on our own rather than raise cattle and continue to depend on the multinationals to market for us. If the ABP/CCA followers want to continue that dead end route, it is their choice. Mine is to convince more and more producers to use this class action money to buy back our industry in small and large ways ---- "ONE BLOODY STEAK AT A TIME" if we have to.

[per]

That is the problem blindly trusting the science. We can point to many examples of products that the science showed was safe to use and then 20 years later it was deemed unfit. It doesn't create a mountain of faith in the consumer when you state the sound science line. The bottom line is that it is the consumer that pays for the product and like it or not they have opinions on what they would like to buy. Some would say we can educate them and some are willing to provide what they want. Maybe there is room for both, maybe not.

[farmers_son]

If you look to the situation in South Korea and the opening of their borders to U.S. beef you can see the interaction between politics, science and consumers.

The science said the U.S. beef was safe but South Korea is very protectionist. The U.S. had to use very strong politics to get their product into South Korea. Then the opposition parties organized huge rallies against U.S. beef as a ploy to defeat the party in power. After the election U.S. beef entered South Korea and immediately displaced the Australian product.

Sometimes politicians will claim to represent the consumers wishes but they are simply looking after their own interests. And that is why science is to important, consumerism can be used to justify anything from capital punishmnet to the existence of aliens from outer space. The science is not perfect but is not nearly as political and tends to be at least a little bit objective.

I am sure any beef exports to the EU will have to be hormone free but the fact remains that the hormone issue is not the only barrier to trade with the EU, there remain high tariffs and a general protectionist sentiment. So the mix of science, politics and consumerism is in full play in Europe. It is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.

[rkaiser]

Come on FS ---- ABP?CCA has been hiding behind the "protectionist" issue far too long. Don't seem to have any trouble fighting the most "protectionist" country in the world right now and spending millions of checkoff dollars doing it.

It's not a protectionist problem bud, it's a multinational control problem. When we start marketing our own beef --- borders will open. If we continue to keep the blinders on and ignore the "fact" that beef marketing is a game for Cargill and the big boys, we --- the cattle producers --- will get no where.

Pick up a stick and get in the game FS.

[farmers_son]

All I can say is Ranchers Beef was not a multinational and they could not make it happen.

Just my opinion but the reason the U.S. was successful in opening borders to South Korea and why they might be first at getting meaningful trade into Europe is because their government backs up their cattle producers with political clout and our Canadian government does not.

All any potential market has to say is we will not open our borders to Canadian beef until such time as Canada backs off its tariff support for milk and eggs. Every potential foreign market knows our government will never do sacrifice votes in Quebec for western Canadian cattle producers. It is game over before the game even begins.

[Sawbones]

Just for the record FS..Rancher's Beef in a very short period of time was making tremendous inroads into Japan as well as Europe. Despite being only 2.47% of the Canadian slaughter, they had captured 53% of the Canadian sales to Japan. They did not achieve EU status until March 2007 and were shipping product into Switzerland and Italy. Projection for 2008 would have 25% of their shipment going to EU. If ATB had not been so short-sighted as to cut their operating capital, the plant would have been operational and there would have been a marketing presence of Canadian beef in Europe.

[farmers_son]

That would have been my hope too.

The market our calves would have gone to would have been Italy. We were going to receive a premium for the calves but we had to jump through quite a few hoops to prove they were hormone free; hiring vets to inspect the calves until they were slaughter weight and so on. All of which cost quite a bit and would have easten up most or all of any premium. Still we wanted to do it because it seemed like a good thing.

We had a relatively small window of time to get the calves enrolled as they needed a special tag before branding. Ranchers would not enroll our calves until they had a solid sale and there were no solid sales in time before our calves were too old. It turned out best in the end because Ranchers folded before our calves would have been slaughter weight so we saved the expense of verifying they were hormone free.

Why Ranchers Beef folded would make a very interesting case study for business students interested in ag financing. It was not just about ATB.

[rkaiser]

That's right FS, it was more than ATB. Any new start up has it's challenges. Did you invest in Ranchers FS? Or were you simply trying to get a premium for your calves? Your vision was there. To see our domestic supply shrunk by taking beef out of our North American system. On a conventional level, that is one of the only ways we are going to drive price higher. But had you and a few more folks invested rather than simply tried to make a few bucks yourselves, maybe ranchers could have flown. It was mostly about money, and maybe a bit about the way our so called major industry players -- ABP/CCA -- lined up with the government at the time rather than challenge the feds to let Ranchers test for BSE, comply over time with CFIA rules and allow the brave investors a bit more time to get things working better.

Are you going to teach these kids you speak of ---- the right way to do business FS?

[Sawbones]

CFIA is one of the main stumbling blocks to the EU marketplace. We should not have to verify calves prior to weaning for them to become eligible for EU. We should have herd certification for those producers who wish to raise their animals without hormones and all their cattle could be marketed in that manner. The EU has a tremendous opportunity for young cows..the preference in France for 3-4 year old cows. We have to get CFIA to reduce their regulatory burden and then find a packer who is willing to export cattle in sufficient numbers.

[rkaiser]

Find a packer who will do it....HA sorry sawbones... But that is the true problem. There is no small packer interested because they are simply trying to survive and our now "two" multinational players have no interest in decreasing their wonderful little captive supply of grain fed beeves when they can guarantee profit within our North American borders.

And yes FS there is lots of potential for export but the risk involved for players like this is outbalanced by this guaranteed profit on a world wide basis.

We need a packer all right... But that packer needs to give a rats as about the producer ---- as in --- producer owned. Pulling beef into a market that is starving for it.

Honestly --- if we don't take this cash from the BSE class action suit and buy our industry back --- we will be nothing more than a bunch of those rig boys with their big toys when the market crashes again.

The problem is packer domination.....plain and simple.