Does Generic Advertising Benefit Producers?

[grassfarmer]

Come on Randy what hope do we have of passing such resolutions? Remember the ABP is not in the business of picking winners and losers, they insist it must all be free enterprise in the free market economy and no subsidy given to any sector of the industry.
This conveniently ignores the fact that these same rules have successfully handed control of the processing sector and millions of dollars of tax payers money to two US based global corporations.

cswilson, I don't know about some of the newer mobile outfits but I spoke to one in my area back when we started our beef retailing business and they were unable to produce inspected beef. Either the mobile part or their own cutting plant was not up to the inspected standard - I think the mobile kill was and their plant wasn't or the problem may have been in the transportation between the two. Either way the end result was they were actually more expensive than a local plant producing inspected beef so it didn't make much sense to use them. Apart from the stress and cleanliness issue - I would prefer to kill out in the pasture but rules deem that is not acceptable, far better to do it an a large plant that due to throughput can not be kept clean.

[cswilson]

There's some built in the USA that pass USDA standards or whatever not sure if they are close to ours or not.

[farmers_son]

Grassfarmer: The point I was trying to make was we need to consider all options and think out of the box. It is not an idea that I am promoting in any way. I do think that if the reasons we were not building producer owned packing plants was over fears that we could not compete with Cargill then one solution is to look for ways to partner with Cargill. E.g. Cargill's distribution and packing skills, our ability to develop and promote a brand plus we have the ultimate control over where our cattle go. We own the primary ingredient. Right now we are giving away our brand identity and it is questionable if we receive any financial benefits in return. Anyway it was just a way out there idea.

Would Cargill voluntarily give up some of their profits? I think there is reason to believe that the future profitability of the packing industry in Canada is threatened. COOL is a threat to our entire industry including the packing plants if we do not successfully challenge COOL under NAFTA. Bio fuels has the potential to dramatically change where cattle are fed. If our cattle feeding industry moves south of the border one of our two packers may throw their packing plant in a suitcase and taking it south.

What may end up driving producer packing plants is not the great profitability that they might enjoy rather the need to retain the ability to slaughter at least a percentage of our cattle at home and the need to create fair pricing for our live cattle. We remain way too dependent upon access to slaughter facilities on the other side of an international border to get anything resembling a competitive bid for our live cattle and it could get worse. Eventually we may be forced to actually do something about it.

[rkaiser]

And the time is coming quickly farmer_son. It looks more and more likely that the Ranchers Beef plant at Balzac may be in squeezed out in it's present form. What an opportunity to see if we can get any support for producer ownership before one of the two big boys makes a play for it.

When we travelled the country with BIG C a few years ago, the idea of a producer owned plant paid for with a checkoff received rave reviews and still holds merit today. I don't know if Cam has the patience to go to ABP/CCA one more time, but maybe you could help us lead a delegation now that ABP is asking for input from producers for direction.