ABP Zone Meetings

[cowman]

I wonder how that would work? If we directed the $10 million to operate a producer plant? Do you think Cargill/IBP/XL might consider it unfair?
I do agree with you that it is not in our best interests to be doing the advertizing for the people who are making the money on our products. I also do not agree that our forced check off dollars are being spent to do the governments work! International trade is their responsibility and yet here we are spending millions to lobby in the USA. If they did their bloody job we wouldn't have to?
I also really resent that my forced checkoff dollars go to defend the right of a chosen few to keep ripping off the Alberta taxpayer to the tune of over $40 million a year! So that a forced cattle tax(mandatory checkoff) goes to fund a lobby to steal $40 million from surface rights that in reality should belong to the Alberta people!
Bottom line: The ABP is not needed. It is costing us too much for whatever percieved benifit we might be getting. Time to either radically change the whole structure(and the way it is funded) or scrap it?

[kpb]

cowman I agree with you that the ABP needs to be radically changed or eliminated but my biggest complaint about them is that they are totally misguided. I do not want them chasing foreign markets because there is no possible way that, even if they are successful, that that will benefit individual producers. This is a complete waste of time and money. I would support money going to a producer packing plant but only if the government would support, through legislation, such a plant. Otherwise it cannot succeed against the big packers.
All of our industry organizations are misguided by thinking that our problems will be solved by finding foreign markets willing to take our beef. Do we really want to rely on more foreign governments to make decisions that will benefit us? All these groups need to re-examine their ways of getting us out of the current jam because what they're doing so far cannot work.
If you're producing too much of something you don't get yourself in a better situation by producing even more and hoping that some innocent will buy it.

[kpb]

The first of the ABP Zone meetings in tonight, it would be appreciated if any of you folks could provide feedback from any of the meetings this week.
It will be interesting to see how well they are attended, and if producers really do provide feedback and direction to the organization.

[kpb]

Got a report on the Zone meeting last night, apparently you did very well with your speech Randy