A Political Idea..? Attn: Kato

[rsomer]

Although Cam Ostercamp is entitled to his opinion, it would be best if his opinion got no further than Lee Gunderson's web site.

Somewhere about the time he suggested that someone must be pulling the strings of anyone who did not agree that 100% testing was the saviour of our industry, he lost me. No one pulls my strings.

Mr. Ostercamp is willing to sacrifice our beef market to the U.S. in the hope, and it is a very thin hope, of getting sales into Japan. Those sales would never come close to matching what we are selling into the U.S. right now, with more sales right around the corner.

Although I don't know Mr. Ostercamp, there is nothing in his essay that suggests to me that he understands our industry at all. As soon as the border opens to our live cattle his call for 100% testing will be lost in the rush of cattle moving south.

[kato]

True, but can you think of a better way to fast track the border than the threat of testing? I can't.

[kato]

How do you feel that testing will sacrifice our "market with the Americans"? They have groups pushing for testing themselves, and are using this testing bullshit to push their own theories of science.
Why don't you read through this thing again rsomer, and tell me which parts are untrue.
Surely nobody pulls your strings, and we all grab a bit of emotion when we write. This statement did what he intended it to do. Stir things up. Nothing has happened since the border was closed that does not revolve around money and greed. Your single minded focus on getting back to the way things were is not helping now, and will likely not help once the border is open.
From what I have read from yourself and Cam, rsomer, I would not go stating that Cam has little knowledge of the industry. Seems your grasp is a bit narrow.
Dispute his claims about Packer ownership, or government programs.
Show us all how he does not have a clue about packing industry infrustructure.
Getting all pissy about one little paranoia statement (meant to get attention), is not an argument for dispelling a whole bunch of truth!!

[rsomer]

Kato: I hear what you are saying and know where you are coming from. We are all searching for answers on how the border might be opened.

With all due respect to Cam Ostercamp, he has gone to considerable effort to draft up his viewpoint on the BSE crisis and should be commended for doing so.

Lets review the problem. The problem is not that we have empty packing plants with no markets for beef because we don’t test 100% for BSE. The problem is that Canada does not have sufficient packing plant capacity to slaughter our domestic production. We cannot slaughter our production, even though there is a strong market for everything we can get in a box. 100% testing will not increase our packing plant capacity. The solution, short term, is to open the border to live cattle.

RpKaiser: Re "Your single minded focus on getting back to the way things were is not helping now, and will likely not help once the border is open" To be clear, I saw difficulties with the Canadian beef industry before BSE and said so publicly. We needed a made in Canada price discovery and risk management system before May 20 as much as we need it now. We were too dependent upon shipping live cattle to the U.S. and too dependent on the U.S. for price discovery and risk management. I support Shirley McClellan 100% when she says Alberta should not ship any beef out of this province except in a box and have been a public proponent of producer owned packing plants. I, for one, do not want to see things go back to the way they were. Still, the industry cannot wait for these long term solutions, we need a short term fix right away. That fix is to open the border to live cattle not test 100%.

Our industry is looking to two important export customers, the U.S. and Japan/Asia. Of these two customers, the U.S. is far and away the most important to our industry in terms of volume and is the only customer that might accept our live cattle. I don’t really accept the notion that the customer is always right when it comes to international trade because trade between countries is a barter, tit for tat kind of relationship as opposed to a one way marketer/customer relationship. Still if we use the customer is always right cliché and we have two customers, one that is saying test 100% and the other saying surveillance testing is backed by science which one do we go with? Given that only one customer would even consider accepting our live cattle, the answer is clear. We go with the U.S., right or wrong. On top of that our relationship with the U.S. going back decades leading to our respective industries being viewed by the entire world as a harmonized North American beef industry makes the decision on who we need to side with pretty plain and obvious.

On the topic of the customer is always right, I note that when our industry leaders take market signals from the U.S., Cam Ostercamp would say they are having their strings pulled. If the industry were to take their signals from Japan we would be responding to customer demands. Can’t have it both ways.

I think the threat of BSE testing will not help us get our border open to live cattle. The U.S. is not in a mood to respond to threats, they believe that you are either with them or against them. I believe the very real promise, not threat, but market reality that unless the border opens up right now to our live cattle that the North West U.S. will loose their packing plant industry and that industry including the very equipment in those plants will move to Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. That is what will get our border open.

The Canadian beef industry is not at as much risk of disappearing as the North West U.S. meat packers folding. If the U.S. looses this packing industry they have no one to blame but themselves. That is the message the U.S. needs to hear.

[rsomer]

Why so quick to say that Cam's article should be shelved rsomer. You have reacted to only a couple of the points that he makes, and basically agreed with a lot of others.
Is it pride, or what? Why is it that the more oppinionated you are, the more you are afraid to give any one credit for having an opinion.
The points you make about the USA are obvious, but don't address the problem we are having with Cargil, and Tyson. Sure an open border will free up the competition, but those very folks we are in bed with are the ones who are fighting that open border.(You can bet your life on that.)

This article is full of truth, and full of solidarity among cattle producers in Canada. Cow calf, background, and feedlot owners have all been hurt by a bunch of bull shit sceince, and an American packing industry taking advantage of it all. Canadian cattle producers are being played as pawns by governments, and big business, and we need something like this to give us hope, beyond your ever changing "day of salvation".

You talk of trading partners beyond the US as miniscule, and they will be as long as we keep wasting our time trying to convince the US to open their border. If we would have taken some of the last year, and most of the government money, and spent both devoloping new markets, we could be farther ahead in the short, and long term. America needs our beef like it needs a hole in the head. They only by it because they can get it cheap. I am quite sure that if Ted Haney wasn't so worried about becoming a Liberal candidate, or patting himself on the back for opening the border to boxed beef (Ha Ha), he could have found more customers like Macau.

[kato]

Now, if we could take this debate to the streets we might get something going!

My biggest worry is that we are going to get lost in this election. Shoved to the back of the house and forgotten. The time to instigate change is before the election, not after.

Ya, I know, election promises, never followed up on, ya da ya da ya da. But better to have a promise thrown your way than to try and get some action out of a government that's looking at a good solid four years of not having to listen to anyone.

If this essay gets circulated enough it just might start up some dialogue that could actually lead to something.

As of right now, our neighbours to the south are under the comfortable impression that there is nothing we can do to help ourselves, and they will get around to tossing us a bone every once in a while just to make sure we don't do anything silly like start to think for ourselves.

Open border or not, it would be dangerous to go back to business like it was pre-BSE without any changes.

If we did, then when the Americans get their cow, and they probably will, whether they like it or not, then we will go down with them. R-Calf has tossed enough "dangerous beef, one BSE cow, shut the border quick and never open it again" rhetoric around that there is bound to be fallout. The only way to avoid it is an effective Triple S policy, or some really horrible news that will distract the media. Neither one of those scenarios is what anyone would wish for.

If the border opens tomorrow, good, but we should still remember the last year, and try not to fall back into our old ways. More packing facilities, especially producer owned, would still be good insurance. And one good way for them to compete with the big boys is to sell tested beef to customers who are looking for it.

[dalek]

http://www.parl.gc.ca/common/SenatorsMembers_house.asp?Language=E&parl=37&ses=2 &Sect=hoccur

This should give you a list of all the MPs and senators emails. If it doesn't work, the link is at the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, www.ofa.on.ca, under the government links. There used to be a link there to send an email to the entire parliament but I don't see it now.

[15444]

You have got it, Kato. The idea that everyone should go back to shipping tons of live cattle over the border once it opens, whether they be over or under 30 months, shows what is truly wrong with this industry. At that point, we would only be begging to be hung by our ankles by the US again once we find another positive. And, if it went that way, at that point, I would probably advocate for the closure of the border indefinately. Then we would have the chance to get past this notion that our industry is joined at the hip with the US.

It's pretty simple. Quit wasting money. Money contributed to the cattle industry by Ottawa and the provinces goes to two things - universal testing and more producer-owned packing plants. The checkoff dollars that we all pay?..they go to two things - universal testing and more producer-owned packing plants. And when the plants are built and the logistics of blanket testing in place, we announce to the world what we have done.

And for those producers who didn't contribute one cent to the building of the producer-owned packing plants, they get to ship their cattle to Cargill, IBP, XL, Better Beef and Levinoff Meats (all of whom of course, whined against mandatory testing and never implemented it, allowing them to save money and continue to ship boneless beef under 30 months to the US).

[cowman]

Now let me see if I have this right? If I, as a producer, don't "participate" in building a plant I can't sell to those plants? But my checkoff dollars still go into that plant as well as my taxes? Doesn't sound very fair to me.
Maybe it would be a better idea if we skip all the government money and checkoff money and just let the producers who want to invest reap all the rewards of their little adventure into meat packing?
I suspect that when the dust settles on this whole sorry affair, we'll still basically have three large packers or maybe a fourth(Swifts)? I don't doubt that more plants will probably be built, but I doubt they will be able to compete with the big packers, who really know how to play the game! Why do people continue to think that things will be all rosy if they build a big plant? They couldn't compete before BSE and once that border cracks open they will be run out of business in short order. If you want to make them viable you need legislation in place to "protect" them from the real world...and that ain't going to happen?

[cowman]

As rsomer says; lets review the problem.

Canadian cattle producers have bore and continue to bear the brunt of the discovery of BSE in Canada. With the minor exception of our Canadian Taxpayers money which I don't think anyone can deny funneled it's way into the packing industry.

Our leaders, on both sides of the border, continue to stand on the side of non testing as it is not scientifically necessary, while they hold our border closed with no scientific evidence.

America is our best bet for short and long term beef trade due to things like proximity, a wealthy, beef eating population, and similar goals. However they really do not need our beef, they have their own. Good relations with America means nothing, if they have to come in and sweep up what's left of our industry and take it for their own.


Why would we not use the testing issue as a political ploy, as people are doing in the US right now. Every move the US makes is political. Heck, they even have comment periods to hear the will of the people. Not just listen to producer groups like we do here in Canada, made up of elected people from a minority of the industry who don't even have an opposition, to check up on their decisions. Speak out against them, like Cam did, and have your well documented article censored by their governing body.

Lets have a deadline, like the US has. If the border isn't opened by such and such a date, Canada must begin testing. It is Canadian producers who need to be saved from the losses they are incurring on a daily basis. Seems like lots of time to talk, while we loose another group of Canadian producers every day; if not to sheer bankrupcy, then to loss of hope of their industry ever recovering.