Sandhusker said:don said:inspections, documentation. what do you think? play your silly little game of ignorance but you guys screwed up. it's costing us and it's costing american cattlemen. the cattle cycle is screwed and the actions of r-calf have only strengthened the packers grip on the value chain. you have pitted ranchers against ranchers and let the packers off for free. you criticize the canadian situation but your industry is relatively more concentrated. by now it's obvious cool won't keep out foreign product; it only gives the packers an excuse to pay less offshore and take their profits there. your feet must be getting awfully sore from all those gunshot wounds.
Documentation for what? It's sold under the same damn label as US - just like it always has! Nothing has changed!
gcreekrch said:Sandhusker said:don said:inspections, documentation. what do you think? play your silly little game of ignorance but you guys screwed up. it's costing us and it's costing american cattlemen. the cattle cycle is screwed and the actions of r-calf have only strengthened the packers grip on the value chain. you have pitted ranchers against ranchers and let the packers off for free. you criticize the canadian situation but your industry is relatively more concentrated. by now it's obvious cool won't keep out foreign product; it only gives the packers an excuse to pay less offshore and take their profits there. your feet must be getting awfully sore from all those gunshot wounds.
Documentation for what? It's sold under the same damn label as US - just like it always has! Nothing has changed!
What you do with them once they are across is anybody's guess but the paperwork to export is quite involved and of course they have to be branded CAN, which comes off with the hide so the packers can naturalize.
Either way you look at it Sandy, the packers are using COOL against both sides. :wink:
Kato, almost all the points you make can be applied to calves from the Southeast.Kato said:Costs, let's see.
1. Only certain American plants will even take Canadian cattle, so there is extra trucking. Our part of the country is the farthest. Cattle from Manitoba go to Pasco Washington quite often. That is a long way from home.
2. Hauling cattle an extra five hundred miles? Or more? It's not hard to see what that does to the final cheque.
3. Extra shrink from the longer haul time. Let's say a conservative extra 2% on a 55,000 lb. load .. $1,100.00.... for a start.
4. Shrink enough, and you lose grade.
5. Those plants that do take Canadian cattle only do so on certain days of the week, and from what we've been told those days can change from week to week, so even arranging trucks can be difficult.
6. Canadian packers use the discounted prices paid by U.S. buyers to set the Canadian price. Why? Because they can. Isn't it interesting that one of those Canadian packers is American. :roll: It's also interesting that this particular packer does not buy Canadian cattle for any of it's U.S. plants. Much more money to be made here, I guess.
7. Then there's the flat discount right off the top that is applied to the cattle just because they are Canadian.
There are lots of little costs chipping away at the value of the cattle. It adds up. It has been documented well, and will be presented at the WTO panel.
You are doing exactly what you said the packers want us to do...fight among ourselves
Kato said:You are doing exactly what you said the packers want us to do...fight among ourselves
It takes two to fight. Actually, if I recall correctly, the fight was started by others. Guess who?
Here's a hint. It was started by certain parties who dedicated themselves to defending the northern border from imported Canadian cattle. Parties who spent years raising money and using it to lobby politicians to restrict imports from the north. Parties who preferred to use their energy to diminish competition from fellow cattle producers rather than spend it working with those producers to solve their mutual problems. Parties who even got into bed with anti-beef consumer groups when it suited their agendas, it was that important to shut the border. All the while, the slowdown of Canadian cattle to American plants has opened the door, and justified even more imports from overseas and South America.
We did not start this fight, but now we are backed into such a corner that the very survival of the Canadian cattle business is in doubt, and if we do not defend ourselves we will soon all be gone. This is no exaggeration. It has come to this. Everyone I know can hardly wait for the first bred cow sale so they can estimate how much they'll get when they sell out. There is no compassion left in the system for anyone owing money. That's obvious when my husband heard from our neighbour that his bank wants him to sell his equipment to pay his bills this fall, rather than lend him the money to do it. There is no optimism left that things will turn around, and if they do turn around, will it be big enough to make up the equity that has been lost in the past almost seven years.
We all need a miracle to happen in the next couple of months.
Kato said:Does anyone realize that bringing in this legislation caused the smaller American packers to lose one of their best potential marketing angles. Took it right out of their hands and gave the advantage back to the big boys. Levelled the playing field in all the wrong ways.
:???:
Oldtimer said:. . .but why would a consumer pay extra for their certified US beef-- when they could buy US beef (has to be because it has a USDA inspected label :roll: ) at Walmart....
I think you are wrong here...segregation is the easiest way to properly label beef at the least cost. Smaller plants can more easily schedule hundreds of cattle to fill a days processing, where the large plants have to schedule thousands of cattle...processing cost advantage to the smaller plants. The problem is that there aren't the smaller plants to take advantage of COOL because they have been put out of business by the market power of the big food corporations and government regulations. This is one of the disadvantages of concentration of the processing industry. Efficiency is good for the big boys...more avenues to get cattle processed is good for the producer.Kato said:Does anyone realize that bringing in this legislation caused the smaller American packers to lose one of their best potential marketing angles.
Kato, your post illustrates what is wrong with the beef industry on both sides of the border...when the calf goes out our gate, producers lose all control of our product. If we want more money out of the market place, we have to take back some or all of that control.Kato said:We are very proud of Canadian beef. In fact we have people in your country promoting it right now to your top chefs and your supermarkets. Put all the Canadian beef out there you can, and we'll be very happy to take credit for it's quality. But the problem comes when the only thing Canadian about it is where it was born. Canadian beef comes from Canadian packing plants where it was processed.
Canadian cattle who spend their lives living in American feedlots and have been fed, handled, and slaughtered in an American plant become American beef. It's as simple as that. 99% of problems that can happen with beef happen at the plant or later, so why on earth would we let a foreign country put our name on one of their screwups? You guys talk about giving up control to foreign countries, so why can't we? If we process it, we'll claim responsibility, but if someone else processes it and screws it up, then it's not our fault, so why would we accept the blame?
Canadian beef comes from Canada. Canadian cattle killed in the U.S. become American beef. That's the bottom line. As is the value added that benefits your economy.