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Cost of Beef vs. Chicken

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Econ101

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Joined
Aug 26, 2005
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One of you Canadians brought up the cost of chicken breast in Canada. I tried to search for the post but could not find it. I am aware that chicken in Canada is supply managed. Can you post again what the costs of chicken in Canada is with your supply management? Jason touched on this topic once before, but I think it is worth looking into for the cattlemen out there that serve the U.S. and Canadian markets.
 
I found it, Kato it was your post:

Joined: 10 Feb 2005
Posts: 531
Location: Manitoba - At the end of the road

PostPosted: Sun Mar 12, 2006 10:48 am Post subject: Reply with quote
In Canada we have chicken marketing boards. These are producer run entities through which all chicken are bought and sold. Producers have quotas that they must stay within, and the processors must pay the price negotiated by the marketing boards if they want chicken.

A package of skinless boneless chicken breasts will cost you about $8.00 a pound in our local store.

I've never seen a Canadian poultry farmer go broke. They don't raise birds under the supervision of any packer. They are all independent producers. A friend of ours just retired very nicely on just the sale of quota alone without parting with any other assets.

Does this tell us something?

Yup.. American trade negotiators are dedicated to dismantling our system .

I know a lot of independent types resist this sort of thing, but it does say something for the benefits of primary producers getting together to get a little control over their own futures.

I also remember a short period of time years back when we in Manitoba actually had a beef marketing desk. It's a long time ago, but I can't remember having a lot of issues with it at the time. It was just for fat cattle, not for feeders. Free trade blew that out of the water.
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Now I want you to think what would happen to beef consumption in the United States if chicken breast cost 6 dollars per lb. If the poultry companies had to respect the poultry farmers because GIPSA did not allow poultry companies to get away with the market tricks they do through the frauds that JoAnn Waterfield allowed.

I guarantee you it would do more for beef "demand" than a booth in a Montana fair, no matter how good intentioned the booth and the people were.
 
A so called "Value Pack" of chicken breasts will cost you about $23.00 this week at Safeway. For that matter, the price of chicken in the store has kept the market up for small flock owners that want to sell roasting chickens direct to the public too. If you want to buy a farm raised roaster here, it's going to cost you between $1.75 and $2.00 a pound. Same goes for turkeys.
 
Kato said:
A so called "Value Pack" of chicken breasts will cost you about $23.00 this week at Safeway. For that matter, the price of chicken in the store has kept the market up for small flock owners that want to sell roasting chickens direct to the public too. If you want to buy a farm raised roaster here, it's going to cost you between $1.75 and $2.00 a pound. Same goes for turkeys.
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Boy, that would sure jack the price of chicken in the U.S. up. I wonder how much "demand" beef has lost because GIPSA has not been enforcing the economic protections of the PSA against Tyson and others so they could drive the price of chicken down. Jason mentioned this once before.

While cattlemen have been dogged with the logic of decreasing the price of beef to compete with chicken, I think the reasoning needs to be turned around the other way. Why not make chicken cost more by making sure the Tyson's of the world don't cheat their producers and drive the price of chicken lower. In view of the OIG report, GIPSA seems to have been doing the opposite.

If the price of chicken in the U.S. was not so cheap, there would be a lot more beef sold and at higher prices. Those knuckleheads at the NCBA were too worried about "protecting" beef that they didn't seem to realize that protecting poultry producers would go a long way to helping beef "demand". A lot more than the checkoff ever did or would.

Either the NCBA is being run by a bunch of idiots or they are in bed with the packers by not making sure that GIPSA enforces the law. Either way, they do a disservice to cattle producers.
 
The Tyson's of the world have been working the "divide and conquer" angle with primary producers for years, and have become expert at it.

When there is one buyer and a bunch of individual suppliers, it's not who will sell to the highest bidder, it's who will buy from the cheapest seller.

Walmart economics. Guess who's winning? It's not us. :?
 

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