Beef Initiative Group Canada-Great BIG C !

[whiteface]

That is exactly the point I want to get out as well, kato. I don't especially want mandatory testing, just the option for 100% testing at smaller, perhaps producer owned (or otherwise) plants. I would like for us to be ready also for when the states are ready to slam another CCIA tag in a suspected case and try further to justify keeping the border closed forever. We need other options. Packing plants would be nice, permission to test is necessary and sell the meat to whoever requires the test and like everything else in business, costs are passed on to the people that desire or require the test. How hard is this to understand. If people are concerned with safety, its tested. If the us wants to bitch about our contaminated meat, here's the proof, shove it up your @$%#$%, get your own system, including traceback. Finding new cases, you sure will whether its contagious or not and I sure as hell would like to find cases sooner with a test rather than later as a global epidemic. And not only this, I think with testing our meat, costs get passed on, including to the states, maybe they can no longer afford our meat and have to compete with Japan or the UK for the product. People are so worried about these new packing plants going under when (yeah, right) the border opens, who's to say they get it just because they decided they will now accept our meat #$@$% them! Certainly whos to say they get it without paying the price...our costs for testing plus the interest on those new packing plants. This is like any other business venture, it just involves cattle instead of something else. You pay more for a Ferrari than a ford focus and you get more car with the higher price tag, and just about anyone who can afford it wants better things but we have choice also, we're not forced to have to drive one or the other.

[kato]

We've made the news in Australia. How's that for getting your opinions out to the public?

Canada Beef Industry Crisis- Paper
(Monday, May 24, 2004 - Australian Cattlefacts)

"When you simply look at the big picture..., what we see is the legalized prostitution of the Canadian Beef Industry by the largest American agriculture power brokers on the planet. As it stands now, we do nothing to resist." Not our words but the conclusions of a desperate Canadian beef producer trying to wake his fellow producers out of an ignorance and aparthy about their real industry as it flirts with post BSE demise. You can read the whole (very long) paper in the Money With Cattle pages of our web site- look under Canada.
Although this story is about the BSE related woes of the Canadian Cattle industry it has been reproduced on the Cattlefacts web site for future reference because we consider it highly instructive for Australian cattle producers. Except for the emphasis on BSE, many Australian producers could feel right at home inside this picture. It also gives readers an excellent insight into the relationship of the huge U.S. cattle market with it's minnow dependents, Canada and Mexico.

Written by one producer, Cam Ostercamp, it highlights the vulnerabilities of an export dependent beef industry (like Australia's) and how that industry can be brought to its knees by instutionalised ignorance, aparthy and wrong headed thinking. It details the absolute dominance of major buyers and how dependence on them and fear of repercussions from them bind politics, and administrators with thick chords to big company needs and outcomes.

It catalogues the all too familiar naivety of so many producers who are so consumed by demands inside their farm gate and so exploited by greedy monopolies and unimaginative administrators outside it, that they become surfs in their own kingdom. Above all it highlights that the outcomes an industry gets is directly related to the quality and accountability of its industry leadership. Neither of which are highly rated in Australia at this time, by Cattlefacts at least. Your comments are welcomed by Cattlefacts ..END

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[kato]

Here's the link.

http://www.cattlefacts.com.au/ArticleEditor_Preview.asp?AID=1307

Seems the cattle business has similar problems wherever you are.

[grassfarmer]

Cakadu, You say: "Now more than ever, supplying the domestic consumer is crucial for us. As is supplying what cuts we are to the US." Unfortunately due to the Packer practises, supplying the Canadian and US markets at current prices is what has brought this industry to the brink. The returns the producer is getting are unsustainable. Understanding this would perhaps lead you to get behind this new producer group even if testing shouldn't really be an issue.

[rsomer]

Cakadu: I was struck by the wisdom in your comments and then I remembered. 100% testing is not going to happen. It is not that I am for or against 100% testing but it is not going to happen. We are absolutely positively going to be harmonized with the U.S. and there is nothing any of us is going to do about that. Given that reality, producers calling for 100% testing definately has the potential to undermine our consumers confidence in beef with no potential of ever actually happening.
Worse, Japan might take strength from Canadian producers support of 100% testing and hold tough in talks with the U.S. The U.S. won't give on their position dragging out the talks and delaying the opening of our border.
I do think there needs to be a more rational response to a positive BSE test from all our customers, domestic and foreign before North American will even consider 100% testing. In the meantime removing the SRMs does provide 100% assurance of food safety. I know that is not what most of you want to see but that is how it is.

The U.S. taking so long to open our border is just going to destroy all confidence in their and our beef. Our producers have had it up to their eyeballs and are fed up. It is understandable that producers are reaching out for solutions. Still 100% testing is not going to happen. It is not an option government will even consider.

[rsomer]

I am so glad that you have so much confidence in your consumer confidence theory rsomer. It does not sem to me that you are convincing too many on this thread however. I personally don't go for the "treat them like the dummies they are" approach, but you and all of the people who have taken that stand will obviously never budge.

Like I have said before, Japan is treating their consumers with respect and even looking to them for direction. This is a long range goal, and one that will proove the hyper infectious disease theory wrong as well.

Show me proof (experimental and theoretical) that BSE is passed through feed rsomer. This would be a good homework assignment for someone with all the statistics and the answers like yourself.

Call us splinter, and predict us dangerous, but don't call us useless.

[ALICIA]

The customer will be 100% confident when we can advertize that every bet of meat that is in the store has been tested for BSE.
Like it or not if Canada test, the states will have to follow along because they will loose sales if they do not.
ps. Just because Australia has not reported a case of BSE doesn't mean they have not found one in the bush. Don't they have just as many sheep as England and New Zealand also.

[cswilson]

I hate to rain on anybody's parade-but once these packing plants are built I assume they will be run like a business-ergo to make a profit.I can't see how they will be paying more for my finished cattle if that is the case.The packing business is brutally competive-that is the reason there are so few as of today. The only way I can see them working is if they fill some niche the big three aren't supplying. To go head to head with them I just can't see being feasable.

[cowman]

cswilson: I believe that too! However it sure would be nice if we had a couple of cow plants so we could maybe get a couple of buyers bidding on the old cows?
When the border opens the American plants will probably come calling for cows again so hopefully a cow plant would be strong enough to compete? Lets face it a lot of these "packing schemes" just aren't sustainable if the border opens? Maybe if people were committed to selling their cattle to them at less than market value, but somehow that doesn't strike me as being very good business?
It seems the industry is moving towards vertical integration? Where the producer has to own the cattle all the way up the food chain. So that the cattle producer needs to be a feeder, packer, marketer, and retailer! Most people have enough to do just raising the darned animals and growing the feed? They don't really have the time or the effort to take on the rest...and if you aren't hands on in any business things can often go to hell in a handbasket fairly fast?
I still believe this industry could be made accountable up the chain by some decent legislation, instead of the stuff we have now that favors the meat oligarchy?

[rsomer]

I think producers totally underestimate their market power when it comes to packing plants. I think back to the prairie grain farmer in the 20’s and 30’s when the cooperative grain farmers took on the established companies and started the Pool elevators and the UGG. For fifty years, two generations, these grain companies competed with the big players like Cargill and Louis Dreyfus. And they would still be competitive today except producers forgot the reason these coops were established in first place.

At some point Canadian beef producers will see that there is absolutely no future in continuing to sell their product to the Cargill and Tyson Foods and start packing plants they own. Farmers have all the market power if they simply refuse to sell to Cargill and Tyson. For me, even if I got $50 a head less selling to a packing plant I owned it would be still be a great investment. I would have vertically integrated my farm up the supply chain. I would have effectively hedged myself from slaughter price fluctuations and my end price would now be determined by the boxed beef price which is much more stable. I would have guaranteed myself a market for my fat steers which is a problem I am very worried about right now. As a small producer I may not be able to market my calves direct to any packer but have to take live auction prices which really stink.

I see that selling my cattle to Cargill and Tyson has no future at all. Even if BSE ends tomorrow it is my best interest to vertically integrate up the supply chain. There are some small outfits selling their own production out of the back of a freezer which may work but there are a host of advantages to being in an alliance of other producers who join together and form their own cooperatives. The producer owned packing plants would have market opportunities to create brands that really would be competitive. Branded beef offers huge potential for profitability but I would still be happy being part of a producer owned plant if I just smoothed out my prices and had a guaranteed home for my fat cattle.

So I am not worried that Cargill will pay someone else $50 a head more and that makes Cargill more competitive. If that someone accepts that $50 from Cargill they are just selling out their future a bit at a time. A packing plant I owned would always be more competitive when it comes to getting my cattle because I just would not sell them anywhere else. Maybe 50 years from now my grandchildren will forget why the producer owned packing plant was started and it will disappear like the Pool elevators. But in the meantime I think producers will remember 2003-2004 and why producer owned packing plants were established and support them even if the border opened tomorrow.

[cswilson]

You know what would be 'VERY INTERESTING' is if each regular poster would give a brief profile of their operation just to see where some of these views are coming from. I'll go first 150-200 cows-calve later and retain ownership to slaughter on all production. Place cattle on feed at various times some as calves,backgrounded or off grass. Sell 100-150 bred heifers yearly-A.I. sired hfrs aied back. Sell some forage raised bulls also. Back to Rsomer post-if you are going to build something on the premise that people will sell for $50 dollars less you are bound for trouble-remember the road to hell is paved with good intentions-it was exactly that attitude that sunk the SWP-they became an uncompetive top heavy dinasaur and we all know what happened to the dinosaurs.

[kato]

One hundred and eighty cows. Usually sell calves from Jan to April as short keeps, but am feeding to finish this year.

Background between one and two hundred a year. Bought light in the fall and sold as shortkeeps in spring. Except this year when they will be fed to finish. (hopefully later in the year when the border is open.. LOL)

Only crop is greenfeed oats, hay and grazing corn. Everything else in pasture.