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Editorial on R-CALF's lawsuit against border reopening

mrj

Well-known member
What are all you economist wanna-be's/cattle producers posting here going to do when packers decide the only sure way to end e coli contamination is to test every animal coming into the packing plant and REFUSE to take any carrying e coli... followed shortly by all cattle feeders REFUSING to accept any cattle from ranches or farms carrying e coli???

mrj
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
mrj said:
What are all you economist wanna-be's/cattle producers posting here going to do when packers decide the only sure way to end e coli contamination is to test every animal coming into the packing plant and REFUSE to take any carrying e coli... followed shortly by all cattle feeders REFUSING to accept any cattle from ranches or farms carrying e coli???

mrj

They won't test for BSE but they'll test for e-coli? :shock: :lol: :lol: :lol:
 

Tex

Well-known member
mrj said:
What are all you economist wanna-be's/cattle producers posting here going to do when packers decide the only sure way to end e coli contamination is to test every animal coming into the packing plant and REFUSE to take any carrying e coli... followed shortly by all cattle feeders REFUSING to accept any cattle from ranches or farms carrying e coli???

mrj

mrj, again you show your ignorance of the subject. YOU have ecoli in your guts, and so do cattle. Your neighbor has ecoli, your dog, and your family. The problem is when let the outside ecoli whether on the floor of the slaughter house, the hands of the worker or the hide, get into contact with the meat when it is skinned.

If you were only smart enough, you might make a good advocate for the beef industry. As it is, you are a country bumpkin who is being used.
 

mrj

Well-known member
TexEcon, I'm NOT ignorant of the fact that e coli and many other POTENTIALLY harmful bacteria can and often do live somewhere in the bodies of all humans and animals.

YOU are ignorant of (or more likely, refuse to admit) the fact that many well researched and costly plans to eliminate and/or prevent contamination of meat have been tried by packers with varying degrees of success.

YOU refuse to admit that incidences of e coli CONTAMINATION and foodborne illnesses DID drop significantly for a time.

YOU seem totally focused on placing ALL blame on packers for every e coli incident, while accepting accepting as gospel truth the word of any and all inspectors willing to paint packers as greedy and taking any dangerous short-cut they can devise to poison consumers with defective meat.

YOU ignore the POSSIBILITY that, as highly paid union workers angry over perceived job cuts due to HAACP, it is at the least POSSIBLE they are trying to prove that plan isn't working and that all we need is more inspectors testing continuously.

YOU refuse to admit any possibility workers failures to observe basically cleanliness habits COULD re-infect meat, COULD take short-cuts or fail to properly clean machinery at proper times, and more.

Refusal to consider EVERY POSSIBLE means of contamination of meat and every means of eliminating e coli from the meat in order to "hang the packers" you want to put out of business is prolonging the problem and leaving more people exposed to illness.

When YOU do nothing to help with solving the problem, you are PART of the problem.

You boys playing at being economists here ignore the fact that, YES, cattle prices ARE at historic highs.

It's cattle production COSTS, mostly for, or due to, high fuel prices are the major problem making it ever more difficult to produce cattle profitably. Add the dramatic increases in land costs related more to the fact that there ARE many people making lots of money who want to buy land for recreational or investment purposes who do not have to pay for it by raising cattle, higher grain prices also driving up land prices, and no wonder it is very difficult for any but the very lowest cost cattle producers to make a profit........now how are you going to make that appear the fault of packers????

mrj
 

Tex

Well-known member
mrj said:
TexEcon, I'm NOT ignorant of the fact that e coli and many other POTENTIALLY harmful bacteria can and often do live somewhere in the bodies of all humans and animals.

Tex: Then why did you say: "What are all you economist wanna-be's/cattle producers posting here going to do when packers decide the only sure way to end e coli contamination is to test every animal coming into the packing plant and REFUSE to take any carrying e coli... followed shortly by all cattle feeders REFUSING to accept any cattle from ranches or farms carrying e coli???

mrj"?


YOU are ignorant of (or more likely, refuse to admit) the fact that many well researched and costly plans to eliminate and/or prevent contamination of meat have been tried by packers with varying degrees of success.

Tex:Maybe the old fashioned way of allowing people to slow down and be careful should be tried again. The big packers don't want to do this because then they would lose their advantage over the little packers who do th

YOU refuse to admit that incidences of e coli CONTAMINATION and foodborne illnesses DID drop significantly for a time.

TexI don't know if I believe this. The USDA has not been transparent for some time. I don't think you can trust what they say. They are usually active only after unsafe meat has already caused problems, not before. There are too many inspectors coming forth even with their jobs on the line, who are disputing the USDA.

YOU seem totally focused on placing ALL blame on packers for every e coli incident, while accepting accepting as gospel truth the word of any and all inspectors willing to paint packers as greedy and taking any dangerous short-cut they can devise to poison consumers with defective meat.


Tex: No, not I. When packers take short cuts that allow them to compete on food safety, I point it out. Just like the lead poisoning in toys, you excuse it. Your bias continually takes over reason

YOU ignore the POSSIBILITY that, as highly paid union workers angry over perceived job cuts due to HAACP, it is at the least POSSIBLE they are trying to prove that plan isn't working and that all we need is more inspectors testing continuously.

Tex: Yes, it is a conspiracy against packers.:lol: :lol

YOU refuse to admit any possibility workers failures to observe basically cleanliness habits COULD re-infect meat, COULD take short-cuts or fail to properly clean machinery at proper times, and more.

Tex: Sounds like a packer plant management issue. Am I right in remembering that some of the food giants told their employees that they would not pay for donning and doffing their required clean clothes and had a resulting lawsuit? Didn't that one reach all the way to the Supreme Court and the court agree with the workers? Another example of packers competing on food safety by not paying their workers to be safe.

Refusal to consider EVERY POSSIBLE means of contamination of meat and every means of eliminating e coli from the meat in order to "hang the packers" you want to put out of business is prolonging the problem and leaving more people exposed to illness.

Tex: Who is refusing? I want packers to stop diminishing beef demand by being cheap on food safety. You also believe in carbon monoxide in order to trick people into thinking their meat is fresher than it is.

When YOU do nothing to help with solving the problem, you are PART of the problem.

Tex: I agree. You work against any kind of change in a packer lead USDA captive agency.

You boys playing at being economists here ignore the fact that, YES, cattle prices ARE at historic highs.

Tex: As others have pointed out, everything is relative. You seemed to have no problem with housing prices through the roof when I pointed it out. Why do you not want beef prices to keep up with inflation and make producers a little money?

It's cattle production COSTS, mostly for, or due to, high fuel prices are the major problem making it ever more difficult to produce cattle profitably. Add the dramatic increases in land costs related more to the fact that there ARE many people making lots of money who want to buy land for recreational or investment purposes who do not have to pay for it by raising cattle, higher grain prices also driving up land prices, and no wonder it is very difficult for any but the very lowest cost cattle producers to make a profit........now how are you going to make that appear the fault of packers????

mrj

mrj, your excuses never cease do they? People have more money for land, recreation, etc, and cattlemen don't make enough to earn a profit because luddites like you believe that lower prices are always better and more profitable for beef. You forget about the costs of those lower prices. You forget the part of the economic pie cattlemen get is decreasing while we have inflation in the rest of our economy. When lower prices come at the expense of food safety, demand decreases. Your favorite word is luddite, isn't it?
 

mrj

Well-known member
TexEcon, after my little 'vacation', I see you still have you own little spin machine going here.

What is it going to take to convince you that you are not infallible and all knowing? Truly, you need to understand that you simply CANNOT read the minds of packers, corporate managers and all others you insist are deliberately TRYING to harm consumers and cheat their fellow man.

I'm not the one ignorant of the facts concerning e coli and other bacteria, TexEcon!

If it does not enter the plant ON THE HIDE of animals, it is far easier to bcontain it and eliminate the possiblity of contamination of meat. It does not ONLY contaminate meat by escaping the gut due to speed of the chain, nor is speed the ONLY way the process can be compromised!

Cattle shedding the bacteria inside the plant PRIOR to being slaughtered might be stopped by refusal to accept cattle carrying e coli.

Slowing the line and "being careful" might work.......IF workers WANT to be careful, but there IS added cost. IF cost were no object to consumers, GREAT! Unfortunately, cost is a large factor in consumer choices.

TexEcon, you are very choosy about what you believe and what you reject from USDA and others. You choose to believe anything said by those who attack packers, and none of the good news about improving food safety problems due to efforts of packers and others. I'm sorry about that, but it is your choice and such a choice on your part serves no one well.

If your premise about slowing the chain speed is true, the smaller, slower, more costly packers definitely will have the advantage over the big, evil packers. That is, IF consumers truly do choose to pay more for 'slow' beef.

I've NEVER excused lead poisoning, that is simply your fantasy. I've pointed out that there are questions, there is the matter of personal responsibility to use products properly and give only the properly sized and painted toys to children young enough to chew on them, and that swallowing and choking on toys presents a more immediate danger to a small child than paint questions do. BTW, no one has posted that Walmart, among others, is making huge efforts to assure safe products. Saw that in a recent Omaha World Herald story, buried deep inside the paper, with minimal headline.

You ignore the fact that not all whistle blowers are validated. Not all unions are innocent of manipulation of facts to 'prove' the 'need' for more workers doing less work for more money.

The clothing issue, which management lost, is a moot point. Wonder if the workers were given a reasonable time frame, of if they can take their own sweet time on the clock donning protective gear???? There are frequent news stories of studies of office and factory workers showing that in many instances, there is serious slacking which dearly costs the businesses while those workers complain of 'ill treatment'. Are they all fakes???? Realizing this can work both ways, people do not have to remain in jobs where they believe themselves treated unfairly! It is also true that all too often, businesses must retain workers they know cheat them on effort expended, because of union protections of those workers.

Isn't it unreasonable, if you really think about it, to insist that packers would knowing "diminish beef demand"..........when they are more profitable selling more product????

FACT: I believe carbon monoxide packaging is beneficial to keep beef LOOKING as fresh as it IS, rather than OTHER packaging which allows beef to prematurely change color, while it STILL is perfectly fresh. It is my (or any other consumers') responsibility to observe the 'use by' date. It is the responsibility of ALL who handle that package to assure it has been kept at proper temperatures during the journey and time between processor packaging it and my purchasing it. Blaming that packaging for problems it does not cause, and which was an excellent tool developed to put the best possible quality of beef in consumers hands, is short sighted and detrimental to increasing beef demand. And you and others like you earn the blame for losing that tool which was beneficial to consumers as well as to the beef industry.

You are wrong......again......when you claim USDA is a packer led (guess you've got 'lead' on your brain!) agency. You are like a little boy seeing 'bogeymen' behind every door again!

Dang! TexEcon, your crystal ball failed again! My take on housing prices is that government under the Clintons, pushed NEW home ownership, especially to people who could in no way afford it. Those chickens have come home to roost under another administration, which will get the blame. That makes life very difficult for people like young ranching families who cannot qualify for those great government loans to build homes they desperately need, all the while paying the taxes that allow their friends in cities to get the loans to build new, when they could buy existing homes that might need a little work, but still are above available rural housing in quality.

Housing money problems is a big subject, with many angles and has NOTHING to do with my beliefs about cattle or beef prices or inflation or producers making money!

I've stated often my belief that we need beef to sell at a variety of prices based on quality grades. We need (and have) top quality selling for very high prices in excess of $100.00 per pound. We need MORE beef of that quality and selling price! We are NOT producing enough Prime grade beef!

We also have consumers who CANNOT (and some who WOULD not) pay that kind of money for beef, no matter the quality. We need beef of suitable quality and moderate prices for those consumers. We have that in reasonable supply.

We have consumers who have a hard time affording even the lowest quality and cost beef. We probably need more affordable beef they can enjoy, and the big, efficient packing industry provides more of that than the smaller, slower packers can.

We would have far less of that affordable lowest cost beef if your plan to eliminate the largest packers succeeds, therefore a significant number of consumers in this nation, and the largest pool of consumers, worldwide, could not afford ANY beef. THAT is what would REALLY drop beef demand, IMO.

Niche markets and affordable beef products to suit EVERY consumer need are what is happening now......and what we need MORE of,while improving overall quality of all beef, IMO.

TexEcon it is Luddites like YOU working to damage the current beef packing/processing/distribution system of beef without consideration of what we will have left, who are going to wreck the cattle and beef business.

Members of NCBA like myself, and other groups who recognized long ago that people in all segments of the cattle/beef industry can work together to solve our problems. Working from positions of the strengths of each segment does NOT mean that we in production are controlled by packers, nor that USDA only serves industry, nor that everyone but your own 'pure' self is on the take in some way, or taking "money under the table" as some of your cohorts claim. We all want to improve the business, starting with family ranchers and farmers, as we are the base it is all built upon. Surely you can recognize that there are factors outside any segment of the beef/cattle industries affecting profitability of us all. People in each segment of this industry blaming one another for our ills and/or canibalizing one another has not been successful in the past.........so why do you persist in it????

mrj
 

Tex

Well-known member
mrj, please don't make yourself look like a fool. You wouldn't know truth if it hit you in the face.

You bend over backwards for packers and your ecoli argument shows it. Blame everything on the producer. Tell me, do you get preferential pricing for your cattle or do you just love packers so much that you work for them for free?
 

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