Bill 19 reform

[rkaiser]

I like yer style Vagabond... A little salmon never hurt anyone ---- unless of course it was raised in one of them farms ---- Lots of problems in that industry as well.

It would be fun to have a Barby with all the boys on Agriville. Poor old FS would have to wear a mask of course....LOL

I hear your story about the ones who go too far Kato. Ran into that a few times with our cattle breeds. Folks who buy them because they function on less but they bloody well take it too far. Efficiency is not about starvation. Almost called the SPCA ona fellow Galloway breeder one time --- and he was a lawyer.

Have fun folks, I am not hear to argue every point like the old rkaiser. That was then --- now is now. Good luck to all you hormone pushers... I'll take the folks who are fed up with the excuses and so called science that
says it is all fine.

[grassfarmer]

Yeah I would come to your BBQ Randy, I think we could make F_S a disguise - one of those white sheets with the eye holes cut out like the Klan wear - topped of with an ABP cap of course! Oh and I promise there won't be any lynchin' or burnin' happening ;o)

[Sawbones]

FS I know you do your research but here's an article to add to your collection
" U.S. sets sights on EU beef market: report
By Tom Johnston on 10/6/2008
http://www.meatingplace.com/Ad/ClickThroughRedirector.aspx?info=2976-4221-25547024-http%3a%2f%2fwww.australian-beef.com%2fmpc
U.S. beef producers are catering to the distinct taste that Britons and Europeans have for hormone-free beef, according to a report by the Guardian.

So set on eating only hormone-free beef are the British and Europeans that the rift between the United States and the European Union over restrictions on U.S. beef exports, to some extent, has become irrelevant. U.S. beef producers acknowledge that regardless of whether Washington prevails after 10 years of fighting the EU ban, meateaters across the pond will not eat meat produced with growth-enhancing hormones.

Already motivated by a growing domestic market for hormone-free beef, many U.S. cattle farmers are reconfiguring production practices to cater to both markets.

According to the U.S. Meat Export Federation, the EU imported 7,761 metric tons of US beef in the first half of 2008, a 179 percent increase from 2,786 metric tons in the same period of 2007.

"Within three to five years Europe will be the second or third meat importing market in the world," USMEF Vice President Thad Lively was quoted as saying.

U.S. beef producers believe their grain-fed product will give them a competitive edge in Europe, but entering that market requires more than delivering a hormone-free product. The EU requires third-party verification of all claims, as well as identification and traceability standards and an annual audit.

Tough standards
Leann Saunders, the president of third-party verification company IMI Global, was quoted as saying EU standards are the world's most stringent, but the market is still attractive to producers who already comply with USDA's non hormone-treated cattle standard. Nearly 180 cattle producers and packers have been certified, an increase of more than 100 since spring. "The cow calf producers have gone through this intensive process so they could approve cattle for the EU," Saunders told the Guardian.

As with other foreign markets, Europe provides an opportunity for U.S. producers and packers to sell cuts of beef underutilized in the United States.

Some of the excitement, however, might be tempered by an EU regulation named the Hilton quota, which allows only 58,000 metric tons of beef to be imported from the United States and other countries before tariffs apply.
CCA and CFIA have been the main obstacles in trying to access the EU market and if it isn't stramlined soon we'll once again be watchin from the sidelines
Keep on pushing Randy

[grassfarmer]

Good post Sawbones. Times have changed in the EU - the Hilton tariffs were set up when they were still exporting beef from Europe. There will undoubtedly be opportunities for increased exports to the EU and they will quickly do away with the Hilton to feed their population.
As Sawbones says you've got to be in to win. Is it a coincidence that the US are trying to gain access and the CCA/CFIA are trying to block access for Cdn producers? I would suggest not.

Another point everyone in North America needs to think on is the type of product they want in Europe. The demand will be for grain fed beef (you won't compete on price with their other grassfed suppliers)- but it must be lean, think "Laura's Lean" specs. You can't sell fat in Europe - even marbling fat except to a few resteraunts maybe. Might hit the demand for Angus cattle and boost sales of Limo/Blondes!

[farmers_son]

What rubbish. Lets get real here... CCA has been sending people to Geneva for the WTO talks for years trying to get trade open with the EU and the world. It is not CCA's fault the WTO talks fell through.

But it needs to be pointed out that our Federal government steadfastly refused to budge on reducing Canada's tariffs protecting milk and eggs and this lack of resolve to open trade was a contributing factor in the talks collapsing. But if we are going to play the blame game the U.S. Europe, India and China were mostly to blame for the failure of the crucial WTO talks.

See:
http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/jul/29wto2.htm

Also see the India perspective:
http://www.blonnet.com/2006/07/02/stories/2006070202900300.htm

"Meanwhile, the rich nations are bickering among themselves. For instance, even as the EU agreed to drop farm export subsidies by 2013, "the US, where Congress is fiercely opposed to agriculture liberalisation, believes that Europe's move does not go far enough to merit a reciprocal reduction in its own subsidies," as www.eupolitix.com informs in a report dated June 29. The EU, for its part, wants focus on freer trade in services such as IT, finance and transport. It is argued that subsides by the rich nations to their farmers can "promote poverty in developing countries by driving agricultural prices below what third world farming industries can compete with," as http://en.wikipedia.org notes.

Though subsidies are a drain of taxpayers' money, subsidy cuts are a vexing problem even for the developed world. For, any move to do so can result in a backlash from the local farmers. Ditto with tariff cuts."

It needs to be noted that there is a large black market trade within Europe for cattle implants. While officially hormone free the reality is quite different.

It also needs to be noted that the EU is actively discussing new trade barriers involving animal welfare. So even if we produce the hormone free steer the EU will simply find another way to block trade from North America.

[Sawbones]

FS It may just be that the EU are not trying to block imports but actually want beef that can be verified hormone free and raised humanely.
My main beef (sorry for the pun) with CCA is that you can't legislate someone into buying your product. That's the same fault with ABP and their 5 million dollar slush fund to fight MCOOL. Let the feds look after the political legal matters and maybe we should concentrate on getting a high end product to potential consumers who are willing to pay for a better product.

[farmers_son]

I thought I would follow through on my statement that there is a large black market for hormones in the EU by including a link that backs up that statement:

http://www.bsas.org.uk/about_the_bsas/issue_papers/hormone_growth_promoters_in_cattle/

Begin of Paste

"Effectiveness of the Ban:

Opponents of the ban [on hormones in cattle] argued that controlled use of implants was preferable to the black market that would inevitably follow a ban. So it has proved. A criminal black market in hormone products developed from bases in Belgium. Unscrupulous farmers implanted cattle in unusual sites, e.g. under the skin of the tail, to try and conceal the implants. This raised the risk of whole implants inadvertently entering the human food chain.

Worse still, farmers turned to other undesirable products, notably ?agonists such as clenbuterol administered as a feed additive. These products have a legitimate role in veterinary medicine but are not licensed in the EU for growth promotion.

The ?agonists have remarkable effects on the lean content of the carcass to an extent that conformation becomes more muscular which raises the sale price per kg of carcass. However, ?agonists have the highly detrimental characteristic of making beef tough and powdered formulations present risks to operators, and there have been reports of toxicity in consumers caused by residues in beef liver.

Illegal use was probably never significant in Great Britain but was rampant in European feedlots and in Ireland clenbuterol gained the doubtful sobriquet 'angel dust'. It is uncertain to what extent illegal use persists but it is probably much less now than in the years immediately following implementation of the ban.

There is no pressure within the EU to reverse the ban. The matter has passed beyond science into consumer and trade politics."

[grassfarmer]

F_S, could you provide a date of publication of that article you posted and what time period it was debating?
I remember the clenbuterol feedlot in Ireland scandal and it was around 1990 if I remember right.

[farmers_son]

The article was prepared for British Society for Animal Science by Dr David Allen, Beef Industry Consultant. I believe it would have been written in 2008. If you note the article does say the problem was never prevalent in the UK although certainly was prevalent in the rest of Europe. While illegal use persists it would likely be less prevalent today.


I point I was trying to make is the hormone bans were at least partly based on protectionism. In fairness the attitudes about hormone use in Europe were also partly based on some bad experiences with DES which I remember we used on calves when I was a kid and it was a bad product.

[rkaiser]

Just one more damn good reason for us to use the class action money wisely. We will never get all cattle producers to agree on much of anything. Therefore, those of us who "want" to lead the blind "will lead the blind. There are markets all over the world and in our own countries cities for quality beef. We simply have to find them and supply them on our own rather than raise cattle and continue to depend on the multinationals to market for us. If the ABP/CCA followers want to continue that dead end route, it is their choice. Mine is to convince more and more producers to use this class action money to buy back our industry in small and large ways ---- "ONE BLOODY STEAK AT A TIME" if we have to.

[per]

That is the problem blindly trusting the science. We can point to many examples of products that the science showed was safe to use and then 20 years later it was deemed unfit. It doesn't create a mountain of faith in the consumer when you state the sound science line. The bottom line is that it is the consumer that pays for the product and like it or not they have opinions on what they would like to buy. Some would say we can educate them and some are willing to provide what they want. Maybe there is room for both, maybe not.

[farmers_son]

If you look to the situation in South Korea and the opening of their borders to U.S. beef you can see the interaction between politics, science and consumers.

The science said the U.S. beef was safe but South Korea is very protectionist. The U.S. had to use very strong politics to get their product into South Korea. Then the opposition parties organized huge rallies against U.S. beef as a ploy to defeat the party in power. After the election U.S. beef entered South Korea and immediately displaced the Australian product.

Sometimes politicians will claim to represent the consumers wishes but they are simply looking after their own interests. And that is why science is to important, consumerism can be used to justify anything from capital punishmnet to the existence of aliens from outer space. The science is not perfect but is not nearly as political and tends to be at least a little bit objective.

I am sure any beef exports to the EU will have to be hormone free but the fact remains that the hormone issue is not the only barrier to trade with the EU, there remain high tariffs and a general protectionist sentiment. So the mix of science, politics and consumerism is in full play in Europe. It is hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.

[rkaiser]

Come on FS ---- ABP?CCA has been hiding behind the "protectionist" issue far too long. Don't seem to have any trouble fighting the most "protectionist" country in the world right now and spending millions of checkoff dollars doing it.

It's not a protectionist problem bud, it's a multinational control problem. When we start marketing our own beef --- borders will open. If we continue to keep the blinders on and ignore the "fact" that beef marketing is a game for Cargill and the big boys, we --- the cattle producers --- will get no where.

Pick up a stick and get in the game FS.

[farmers_son]

All I can say is Ranchers Beef was not a multinational and they could not make it happen.

Just my opinion but the reason the U.S. was successful in opening borders to South Korea and why they might be first at getting meaningful trade into Europe is because their government backs up their cattle producers with political clout and our Canadian government does not.

All any potential market has to say is we will not open our borders to Canadian beef until such time as Canada backs off its tariff support for milk and eggs. Every potential foreign market knows our government will never do sacrifice votes in Quebec for western Canadian cattle producers. It is game over before the game even begins.

[Sawbones]

Just for the record FS..Rancher's Beef in a very short period of time was making tremendous inroads into Japan as well as Europe. Despite being only 2.47% of the Canadian slaughter, they had captured 53% of the Canadian sales to Japan. They did not achieve EU status until March 2007 and were shipping product into Switzerland and Italy. Projection for 2008 would have 25% of their shipment going to EU. If ATB had not been so short-sighted as to cut their operating capital, the plant would have been operational and there would have been a marketing presence of Canadian beef in Europe.