don- You are wrong- I don't hope you fail- but also don't think you can succeed....And at one time I did own shares in a co-op regional slaughter house that in the long run could not compete--mainly because of distance from consumer markets and transportation costs, a limited supply of cattle that dryed up after a few years of feedlot closings that came after a couple years of bad weather conditions (drought and shortage of feed, and severe winters and blizzards causing large death losses) and low beef prices.... I've also seen many fairly big outfits with big money backers down here go under not being able to compete with the Bigboys- didn't have the money to stand up to them over the longhaul- saw one neighbor lose a couple million $.....

I'd love to see all the cattle in Canada stay there and be slaughtered- and if M-COOL was a law I'd be fighting to have the border open....But I also think many up there are dreaming if they think they can compete with Cargil and Tyson and crew---I just hope too many don't get sucked in above their head and then end up with nothing...The investments I and Dad made (a couple thousand between us- which was quite an amount in the 60's) gave us a few years of a good market for our feedlot cattle, but ended up not even paying back the proverbial dime...

Isn't even a slaughter house operating in Montana now-- few feedlots and the local ones ( a couple that feed out 10,000) don't finish- have lots closer to the packing plants and markets that finish them out....