From the Badger Newspaper online.
Culling all cowboys
15 December 2009
By Sheri Monk
So, the NFU has called for an inquiry into slaughterhouse and retailer beef profits. Don't hold your breath.
To the NFU's credit, they are the only producer group in Canada making any noise as the Canadian cattle industry bleeds from a 1,000 wounds.
The honest-to-goodness trouble with the NFU is that no one publicly takes them seriously. Privately, I've had all kinds of ranching folk tell me how much they appreciated and identified with the massive NFU cattle crisis report released last year. But no one's talking about it at the auction barns, coffee row or better yet, with their MP. Without public support, there is no public power and without public power, the government's ear will continue to dance to a different beat. And as far as I can tell, the cattle business is not a beat our federal government wants to patrol.
So what if the NFU are seen as a bunch of bicycling bolshevik radicals? I just want action – I don't care where it comes from, be it the NFU or Tiger Woods riding bareback on a Perkins waitress.
When I moved to Maple Creek three summers ago, all I knew about cows is that I liked eating them pretty good, but didn't much care to drink from them. That changed, rapidly. In the fall of 2007, the business was in the tank and the more I heard and saw of it, the more I wanted to learn. And what I found epitomized in one industry, all the negative ramifications of issues like corporate concentration, lack of competition, global, vertically integrated companies and free trade. It was the world wide WalMart effect, neatly packaged between two hamburger buns. And it made me sick.
Whether it began with government and industry group pressure to increase herd size to feed the world, or the federal government's sheer neglect in protecting the industry from the introduction of BSE, or free trade agreements which serve only the masters who promoted them in the first place, I don't know. But I do know the wreck is on and not even the most optimistic, naive seer in the country can predict a happy ending here.
It seems I drive by more and more land which needs fencing – a depressing sign that traditional grazing grass is being abandoned, cultivated, sold out to a culture which promises profit not in exchange for sweat or honesty, but for greed.
The NFU, with the help of an Albertan rancher, butchered a cull cow which would have fetched $340 at auction, but yielded $1,233 worth of hamburger and stewing meat at current retail prices. And make no mistake, cull cows aren't just ground beef anymore – they're used in pre-packaged, ready-to-serve roast suppers consumers pay a premium for at the grocery store. The NFU wants to follow the money through the processing plant and ultimately to the grocery stores. Slaughterhouses say they're not making money, retailers stick to the same story. If this is true, then the beef business in Canada may indeed be the only industry on the planet not administered by government or charity in which no one makes money. That's bullshit and we all know it.
And all the free market fanatics with your emails set on kill, hold your horses. An entirely free enterprise system is capitalist anarchy. Unregulated business may scream freedom to the ears of the elite, but in the real world, the one the rest of us have to live in, it's a disaster. We live in a free, democratic society. Yet we still have a justice system, police and citizenship and media who act as watchdogs. Where is the parallel system for policing business?
Oh, you'll find it in name, on letterhead and on government websites. But it's a paper dog and pony show, created to sedate the masses and lull the population into complicit compliance. And yes, I'm tired of that, too.
Instead of fixing the business with measures like a ban on packer-owned cattle and mandatory, price discovery on private and forward contracts, we try and bully our way into foreign markets. Armed with trade agreements, we pry our way between the legs of reluctant countries, hoping we'll just slide right on in, after Uncle Sam had his way with her first.
Sure, we'll fight COOL to the death and if you're going to die, why not go down as a hypocrite? We travel with "Eat Cdn. beef" stickers on our bumpers, we herald our beef with its Canadian stamp of approval in the grocery store cooler, but we'll cry like a toddler having a tantrum when our largest trading partner does the same.
There's not much I can buy these days that's made in Canada, but by God, if I see the name of our country on any label, I happily pay extra for it. The rule applies to clothing, toys, cutlery and toothpicks, but we have no legislation to ensure we know what we're putting in our mouths?
Look south, way, way south. Look at JBS and its bid to become the biggest beef bully in America. Look how South American beef is being finished now to North American standards and tell me you don't see what's coming.
We're being culled. We're hanging on the hook and we blindly pretend we can still touch the ground, even as we are drained dry.
What's been done to this industry, the home quarter of Canada's wild west, is deplorable. Not rising up to try and save it is criminal.
