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hypocritexposer
Rancher
Joined: 12 Apr 2008
Posts: 17414
Location: real world
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 Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2010 12:56 am Post subject: |
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| Clarencen wrote: |
So far, I think this is just Wolf Wolf!
I have not taken sides with this issue or formed an opinion. I believe when this law is implemented we most likely won't see much difference in the way we sell and price our cattle. The ones that make the most money in the end will still be worth the most. The grids will still be there. We have quallity grades set up for most everything, there just needs to be more transparity so we can learn what to produce, and the price we can expect.
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Every new law that is passed costs $$. Someone will have to pay the additional costs. What are the chances it will be the larger corporations? Who will become more "competitive"?
In a lot of cases the majority (if not all) extra cost, only goes to pay for the added cost of administration and expense of enforcing the new "law".
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Clarencen
Member
Joined: 07 Jan 2007
Posts: 577
Location: South Central SD
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| Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2010 10:09 am Post subject: |
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| It is going to provide more government jobs. It will take more people out of those who produce. Our production is what holds our economy up. The government will not continue to float unless we have a good economy. Our government does not produce wealth.
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Bill
Rancher
Joined: 10 Feb 2005
Posts: 2067
Location: GWN
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Oldtimer
Rancher
Joined: 10 Feb 2005
Posts: 24734
Location: Northeast Montana
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| Posted: Fri Sep 03, 2010 6:12 pm Post subject: |
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I have to chuckle- with NCBA now screaming and whining about "enviromentalists"-- when several years ago they crawled in bed with the Nature Conservancy- to help some of their members be able to better profiteer with conservation easements- which in this part of the country is only going to fasttrack putting that land in the hand of the enviromentalists...
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Group Calls NCBA Attack Desperate Attempt to Deflect Attention Away From Its Cheating With Checkoff Dollars
Source: R-CALF USA - Sept 1, 2010
Billings, Mont. - In a desperate attempt to deflect attention away from the fact that the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) stands accused of cheating and misusing government-mandated Beef Checkoff Program dollars, NCBA has resurrected its tiresome attack against R-CALF USA for working with consumer groups such as Food & Water Watch.
When R-CALF USA worked with Food & Water Watch, the Consumers Federation of America and numerous other consumer groups to pass country-of-origin labeling earlier this decade and then joined with these same consumer groups in a 2007 lawsuit to prevent the introduction of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or BSE disease) from imported Canadian cattle, NCBA cried loudly that R-CALF USA was working with the enemy.
"This is absurd," said R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard. "These consumer groups represent thousands of consumers who happen to be the very people we depend on to eat beef. If we are to improve beef demand, we must promote our product and explain how we raise our product to the members of these groups. What better way to accomplish this than to work directly with these groups to better demonstrate that the U.S.
cattle industry is serious about continuing to raise the safest, most wholesome beef in the world and under the best of conditions?"
Bullard said that R-CALF USA learned long ago that its effectiveness in preventing the multinational meatpackers and their closely aligned trade associations, including NCBA, from capturing control of the live cattle supply chain - just as they have already captured control over the poultry and hog supply chains - is dependent on building coalitions with numerous organizations that agree with R-CALF USA's positions on particular issues.
"We succeeded in passing country-of-origin labeling because we built a coalition of hundreds of various groups - including Food & Water Watch - that support this issue and we succeeding in delaying, for several years, the meatpackers' efforts to prematurely relax our BSE restrictions, again by building a huge coalition," he pointed out. "Recently, we formed a coalition of dozens of groups, again including Food & Water Watch, to prevent the government from importing fresh beef and cattle from Brazil, a country still fighting foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). And, now, we're continuing to build a coalition to support USDA's (U.S. Department of Agriculture's) GIPSA (Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration) rule that will halt the erosion of competition in the U.S. cattle market."
Bullard explained that the meatpackers hate USDA's proposed rule because it would require them to be accountable for their cattle procurement practices, requires meatpackers to keep records so USDA can determine if they are in compliance with the Packers and Stockyards Act (PSA), requires them to be transparent in their marketing practices, and it prohibits certain known, anticompetitive behavior that he said is pervasive in the marketplace where slaughter-ready cattle are sold to packers.
Bullard also said that Food & Water Watch has independently compiled research showing how the growing spread between the price of fed cattle and the price of beef that consumers pay at the grocery store demonstrates that under our current industry structure, the packing and retailing sectors are exploiting both consumers and producers.
"NCBA is supporting the meatpackers' efforts to kill the proposed GIPSA rule, and a June audit of NCBA's management of the government-mandated Beef Checkoff Program revealed that NCBA has misused funds contributed by every cattle producer in America.
"NCBA has breached the trust of every U.S. cattle producer, and rather than to repay the funds the audit indicated were used inappropriately, including NCBA's lobbying influence that is facilitated and greatly enhanced by its receipt of Beef Checkoff funds, NCBA is desperately trying to restore its lost credibility, but it is only digging a deeper hole," Bullard concluded "People, particularly cattle producers, don't appreciate organizations that try to deflect attention away from the issue at hand by trying to tear down other organizations such as Food & Water Watch." |
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~SH~
Rancher
Joined: 14 Feb 2005
Posts: 5426
Location: South Western SD
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| Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2010 12:27 am Post subject: |
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| Bullard: "If we are to improve beef demand, we must promote our product and explain how we raise our product to the members of these groups." |
Wasn't R-CALF the group that said they were not in the "BEEF" industry but rather the "CATTLE" industry and now they are promoting beef? I thought promoting beef only benefitted the packers Mr. Bullard? I thought checkoff dollars were better spent on lawsuits against packers rather than promoting beef?
Does this mean that R-CALF has finally come to the realization that we/they are in the beef industry?
What a revelation.
~SH~
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Big Muddy rancher
Rancher
Joined: 10 Feb 2005
Posts: 15724
Location: Big Muddy valley
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| Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2010 6:51 am Post subject: |
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R-CALF’s Unholy Alliances
Sep 3, 2010 12:41 PM, Troy Marshall
I spent my morning writing the above editorial with the honest goal of trying to promote reconciliation within the industry. Then I got the news that R-CALF had teamed up with an avid anti-beef group; it seemingly makes my earlier comments irrelevant, or at least very hard to justify.
Many within the industry who fought so hard and successfully to maintain domestic beef demand in the aftermath of BSE have long resented comments by R-CALF at that time questioning the safety of U.S. beef. I chalked those comments up to being just poorly considered words by those who believed that mandatory COOL and the end of the global beef trade would be advanced via this tactic. I assumed their hope was that beef demand could be rebuilt eventually.
Such comments continued, however, as reported previously in BEEF Cow-Calf Weekly, when R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard trashed the safety of U.S. beef before an audience in Australia. That incident made it obvious to me that the earlier words weren’t a miscalculation but a deeply held conviction.
Then, this week, I learned that R-CALF had joined forces with Food and Water Watch (FWW) to campaign together in support of the proposed GIPSA rules. FWW is another one of those extreme activist groups that many of us in the industry wouldn’t be aware of except for its sponsorship of the animated video called “The Meatrix” and Meatless Monday campaigns.
While FWW seems largely intent on bringing animal agriculture to an end, it is also hostile toward modern ag in general. What makes this group particularly offensive is its history of capitalizing on false science or simply making up things to promote its agenda. FWW is the embodiment of the philosophy that the end justifies the means.
I understand that political fights cost money and that R-CALF has partnered with anti-meat activist and consumer groups in the past to finance its agenda. But such alliances make it even harder for R-CALF to make its case that the proposed GIPSA rules are in the best interest of the industry; after all, three of the measure’s biggest supporters are government bureaucrats, trial lawyers and anti-ag/anti-beef groups.
Politics makes strange bedfellows, one saying goes; another says that when you lay down with dogs, you’re likely to get fleas.
R-CALF contends that its work with anti-beef groups on country-of-origin labeling and BSE is good political strategy. It also contends continued criticism by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) of these alliances is just an attempt by NCBA to deflect attention from the controversy over the beef checkoff. It’s probably too obvious to point out the irony of that statement.
It is up to producers to make their organizations accountable and keep them focused on the industry’s best interest. The cost of these games to the industry is simply becoming too high to continue to withstand them.
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Bill
Rancher
Joined: 10 Feb 2005
Posts: 2067
Location: GWN
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mrj
Rancher
Joined: 21 Feb 2005
Posts: 3363
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| Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2010 6:03 pm Post subject: |
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For the record, and of course, for our own Doubting Thomas, aka 'Tommy', NCBA simply fulfills contracts awarded by the Operating Committee of the CBB (comprised of representatives of ALL national cattle organizations, NOT just NCBA).
It is impossible for NCBA to "spend" any checkoff dollars not approved by the CBB and USDA.
That the system is complicated is not denied. That is it complicated in order to be extremely fine tuned to account PROPERLY for beef checkoff funds IS denied by those who WANT to find fault with NCBA.
Do not forget that some groups and individuals have spent many years and made many failed attempts to bring down NCBA as an organization of cattle producers! Even to the point of attempting to end the beef checkoff, MULTIPLE times. Not a very good success rate, but each attempt harms efforts of beef promotion EVERY time.
mrj
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ranch hand
Member
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
Posts: 584
Location: USA
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mrj
Rancher
Joined: 21 Feb 2005
Posts: 3363
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| Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 5:04 pm Post subject: |
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Sorry, it is you who have drank someones kool-aide. Check with the CBB and find out how the system works. They can't deny that their own Operating Committee makes the decisions awarding contracts.
Find out for yourself which cattle organizations have representatives on the CBB.
Check the law creating the beef checkoff.
mrj
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