Madness

[grassfarmer]

The madness continues from what I saw on TV of the CCA meeting in Calgary today. Is the latest plan by Laycroft the end result of lots of months of thinking and planning? Basically appeal to Government to pay producers hundreds of millions of dollars to feed cattle and keep them off the market until extra packing plant capacity comes on line. As the capacity is coming from the existing packer cartel this will mean that they can make even more money a year or eighteen months from now. Lakeside will be able to steal and process 5000 a day instead of 4000 a day. How can the "leaders" of our industry not see that without doing something to ensure competition prices paid to producers will not increase.
If they set about legally establishing a fair price for the cattle being currently being slaughtered we could be in a lot better shape by Christmas.

[ALICIA]

If they don't soon do something then I will not matter how much money they pay the producer, cows can't eat money and where is all the feed going to come from if the numbers of cattle keep going up.

[ALICIA]

Can't you see Cargil and Tyson rubbing their hands together grassfarmer. Not only what you have said to be true, but tell me how many Canadian feeder cattle can be "held back" without going over the wieght range for discounts.

If they are not, these good old business minded boys will simply kill their own cattle til these set aside steers even get bigger.

Don't have much confidence in this CCA initiative. Wonder how much producer influence in these CCA alternative ideas?

[ALICIA]

Cattle producers have got to organize themselves and form a very vocal lobby group to let government know what exactly they need to get through this fall.
I have heard complaining from one end of the province to the other in my travels but have yet to see any action on the ground as far as a strong one voice lobby group. If cattle producers aren't happy with what their own umbrella group are proposing, then they should come up with alternative suggestions ASAP.

[cakadu]

What if only the established groups are considered to be the "voice" of the industry? How do you see working around that?

I agree that something has to be done and from what I saw on the news and grassfarmers' interpretation - it is more than just a little frightening to hear that this is what these organizations are proposing after 15 months of the border being closed to everything except boxed, boneless beef.

What is even more madness is that the other ruminant species i.e. sheep seem to be pretty much voiceless in this. The news (or lack thereof)coming from the sheep groups is appalling.

If we are told we need to work through the existing groups, how do we get ahead?

[grassfarmer]

Cakadu, One vague though occured to me as I was walkinag around the cows this morning regarding the ABP. What would happen if we can motivate primary producers to attend their fall producer meetings IN NUMBERS and try and move a vote of no confidence or refuse to elect delegates to represent us? Would that then stop the ABP from being the accepted voice of producers?

[kato]

I was reading the Manitoba Co-operator yesterday, and the views of the MCPA are not the same as the CCA. I know that our representatives are at the CCA meetings right now putting their views out. Hopefully more will do the same.

Our people were also at the NCBA meetings and let the people there know what we thought of this whole thing. When they informed the Americans that we were willing to test for export, and were considering removing SRM's from all ages of cattle, the Americans were quite worried that we were going to gain a competitive advantage over them. According to the article, the Canadian response to this was "Tough". Now that's the kind of people we need representing us!

It's crunch time everybody. We've all got to step up and get involved if we are going to get through this.

We DO have leverage in negotiations with the Americans and Japanese. What we need is people representing us who are willing to use it. If the ones we have now aren't willing to work for us, then it's up to us to find someone who is.

[cswilson]

Lets all take ten of our oldest cows gather them along Number 1 highway and start driving them to Ottawa-think of the media attention-I'm sure we can organize the cowboys to do it-see if Paul wants them.

[magpie]

Let’s take laycroft appeal for money, organize a pooling of funds across the provinces and build our plant. Probably won’t amount to much individually but collectively might make something.

[magpie]

Let’s take laycroft appeal for money, organize a pooling of funds across the provinces and build our plant. Probably won’t amount to much individually but collectively might make something.