Protect your cows grassfarmer!

[Horse]

int3rest I think you mised 1 0 it should be 210mil not 21mil.
Ihave been out of cows for most of this BSE and amazed that most of you with cows bitch about the numbers and prices while you keep on breeding hfrs now I am not to smart but how do you figure that is helping,but if you think the gov would cough up 1000$ per cow let me back in in a hurry.
How much do you think the tax payer is going to keep on giving just so we can be happy rasing cows that are not needed.
I mentioned a while back I think part of the answer is to slaughter some of these calves as baby beef and eliminate some of the suply I know the feeder wont like that idea but feeding them biger and biger waiting for the packers to call is not the answer either.

[intr3est]

Horse, I posted 210 mil. for cull and 21 mil for testing, where did I miss the zero? Thanks for bring my attention to this!

[intr3est]

Horse do remember with a surplus of 3.2 billion of trade in beef, the government makes a bit of tax on this. It's in their best interest to keep a viable industry with this much income and reap the beenfits in taxes.

[grassfarmer]

Inter3est,
The latest proposal to test UK OTM cattle and let them re-enter the food chain if clear is slated to start in 2nd half of 2005. It has been proposed since 2003 and may well be delayed again as the various industry parties try to work out how it will impact them, farmers, abbattoirs, retailers, importers all working at cross purposes.
It's taken the UK Government long enough to come to the decision to test - for nearly 9 years now every OTM animal has been incinerated. Until 2000 there wasn't even a policy of testing 4Ds.The huge # of cases I think currently around 184,000 (including 14,500 cases since 1997 - the strict feedban was introduced March 1996) have been diagnosed with symptoms of BSE before they were tested. There never was a mass cull of cows in the UK so why should we need one here? The UK still reported 242 cases in 2004 - and we get excited about 3?
You mention the tax benefit of a $3.2 billion beef industry - I've heard that Cargill and Tyson don't pay tax in Alberta but to the US government instead - is that the case?

Horse, why shouldn't we breed our heifers? we can't justify keeping them without breeding them and with the price of calves being low we need to sell more, not less. Any idea that we can reduce numbers and force the price up won't work as retailers would simply suck in more imports to fill their needs.

[intr3est]

grassfarmer, you mention 242 cases since the feed ban, Is the UK able to export even now, NO! So should we follow their example in this or be proactive before we get to the point they were at after their feed ban. I don't think we will get to that point, but we should prepare for the worst and expect the best. THINK AHEAD

[grassfarmer]

No I said 14,500 cases since the feed ban. I agree we need to test OTM cattle - save the 9 years dithering about it lets do it.