Peace Country Tender Beef Co-op

[boone]

wd40:could it be that the provincial and or federal governments have been threatened by the enforcement of NAFTAS
Chapter 11 {1102-1103- 1106} stipulates that a host country must treat foreign investors and their investments "no less favorably" than domestic investors, or is this too much of a leap here? Cargill, Lakeside et,al

[wd40]

boone - I couldn't answer that question, but anything is possible. As we all know the ag industry is just another card in a poker deck that usually gets sluffed for higher stakes usually (Eastern).

[grassfarmer]

One point someone mentioned the other day was that the last US proposal to open the border before R-Calf alledgedly scuppered it contained something to the effect that OTM beef would be allowed to cross the border in boxes. Someone else told me yesterday that there was no way this would happen for at least 5 years even if the border opened to live cattle. If the latter is the case we need to be broadcasting this to ranchers - all talk of backing new OTM plants has died down in the last month on the assumption that the border will open soon. We can't risk waiting another 6 or 8 months and not have a single brick laid in a cow slaughter plant.
Producers seem like bears, sell the calves in the fall regardless of price, hibernate until spring and hope next year will be better. Have we really learnt nothing in 18 months?

[cowman]

When Cargill came on the scene in 1989 we had over capacity in slaughter facilities. Thus a lot of very good Canadian packing houses closed their doors. Many reasons but the bottom line was there just wasn't enough cattle to go around?
With the death of the CROW the cattle herd expanded rapidly as every man and his dog got into the cow business. The excess was sent to the states.
Today our packers are basically getting most of the fats killed? They have done this by increasing kill numbers and scrapping their cow kill. Expansion of the plants will increase that kill capacity to a point where they will be able to kill every fat in Canada?
Now when the border opens up to young stuff a certain amount of fat cattle/feeder cattle are probably going to end up in the USA? This will free up slaughter space for cows at IBP and XL Calgary(Cargill never has killed cows).
I would really question how many cow plants we might need and if they could ever pay for themselves before the border opens to cows again? Can a plant be paid for in five years?
There was a reason that our cattle were heading south before this all happened and that reason was there was more money to be made by everybody in the beef business by doing it that way? How will that have been changed? If packing plants in Canada make so much sense why aren't any entrepreneurs jumping right in to get in on the bonanza? How come the banks consider the proposed packing houses as extremely risky?