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Processor Profits Over Sound Science---BSE in Canada

Tam

Well-known member
DiamondSCattleCo said:
So if allowing MBM processing isn't going to ruin the industry, whats it going to do? Help? Did someone forget what happened to calf prices when the border closed? Have you guys forgotten what the price of culls is?

:roll:

Sometimes the obvious is to obvious for some of you guys. Its obvious that only reason the government is allowing MBM processing to continue is to allow feed companies the opportunity to find alternatives. I say too damned bad. Kill ALL animal refuse use, now. The feed companies have had many years in Canada to find adequate alternatives, and if they haven't bothered, its obvious they care more for their own profits than they do the health of the livestock industry.

Are some of you guys actual producers? If so, get some balls and start going to bat for PRODUCERS. I don't frankly give rats sore ass if Purina (or whoever) ends up losing money because they didn't bother finding alternatives. I also don't give a rats sore ass if Tyson loses 4 cents/lb worth of refuse, especially since they've made BILLIONS from BSE.

Sorry for the rant. Been long, hard haying season :)

Rod

Can you explain how your attitude towards these other sectors is going to expediate the implementation of this ban. If you don't care anything about them and what this will cost them why should they care about you ??

The best thing to do is pick a feed manufacture that has already made the decision to not use this stuff in any of their feed. This will be a way of rewarding those that took action to protect the beef industry and the others will be forced to soon follow suit if they want to stay in business. Before long the industry will have a ban and all sectors will still be on speaking terms.
 

DiamondSCattleCo

Well-known member
Jason said:
Instead of waiting for the gov't to ban all animal parts in feed, just don't use them.

Never have, certainly will never even think about it. But the next guy might, so allowing companies the use of MBMs in feed is simply playing with a loaded gun in a crowd of people. Its not just the user thats likely to get hurt, but rather the others around him.

With the risk of cross-contamination from mixed farms, I fail to understand how any cattle producer can accept allowing a company to profit at the possible expense of their own livelihood.

Rod
 

Jason

Well-known member
Rod, the timetable is in place.

Tam has a point about rewarding the companies that produce non animal protiens.

In Alberta we have Maple Leaf ads running about how their chickens have no animal by-products in their feed. They say it is a descision they have made, but the taste and purchase of said chicken is a choice consumers will have to make. I think it is a very classy ad. I would like to see more beef products marketed in a similar way.

As long as we keep saying the neighbor might do this or that, we keep giving beef a black eye. Suggesting commodity beef is somehow dangerous or unsafe is foolish.

If we instead work to upgrade our image, set our product apart without denigrating the rest of the industry, it is good for everyone.

I have learned this lesson in selling bulls. There are lots of sources for good bulls. There are some not so good ones. I try never to bad mouth a breeder, in fact I have even showed some customers where we use similar genetics. Then I describe what I do different.

When selling beef I also tell what the difference is between my beef and generic beef. I feed hay and grain.. feedlots feed silage and grain, I explain the only thing I know is different is most feedlots use many vaccines, I don't, and I know the exact age and breed of the animal I am selling.

Many of my customers still buy some beef at the store, they have found if they buy CAB they get close to what they buy from me, but they aren't afraid of the safety of commodity beef. If they eat more beef from me or from the store, it helps all of us.
 

DiamondSCattleCo

Well-known member
Jason said:
1) Rod, the timetable is in place.

2) Tam has a point about rewarding the companies that produce non animal protiens.

3) As long as we keep saying the neighbor might do this or that, we keep giving beef a black eye. Suggesting commodity beef is somehow dangerous or unsafe is foolish.

1) Unless I've missed something, there is no timetable in place for a complete, total ban on the use MBMs. Until MBM use is completely eradicated, like it is in Britain, there is going to be an unacceptable risk to the livestock industry.

2) So your take on it is that we should allow companies to use MBM feed or not, and then allow them to advertise non-use for financial gain? Tell me something, when the first BSE cow was found, did they simply ban that ONE producer from exporting, or did they shut down the ENTIRE border and cost producers billions? Because of a few people feeding MBM products to their livestock, the entire industry was and still is, in peril. You'll have to pardon me if I say horseshit to the point that Tam was trying to make. Its utter and complete nonsense to put the financial health of a few feed companies and packing plants above the financial AND physical health of an entire industry.

3) How is banning the use of MBM giving our beef a black eye? Quite the opposite in fact. It would be assuring customers that we are doing everything in our power to ensure that our beef is safe. As far as saying the neighbor might do this, or might do that, you and I both know that there is going to be some producers, somewhere, who will buy MBM feed either because its cheaper, or because he/she doesn't believe the science that says its bad news.

Lets take this scenario into account: Lets say we go 6.5 years without a single BSE positive. Then a BSE positive cow comes through, and the transmission route is through some dog food or chicken feed that he bought that legally contained MBMs. Now our feed ban will be called into question again, and we'll have trouble exporting again. More money lost to producers.

Thanks, but no thanks.

And Tam, those feed companies never did give a rats sore ass about us producers when the border shut down. If they did, they would have quit MBM use IMMEDIATELY. Besides, government is in place to ensure the needs of the INDIVIDUAL are met, not this new BS government garbage that ensures that the right of corporations and companies takes the place of the individual. So quite frankly, they simply shouldn't count. If more politicians would realize this, this country wouldn't be in the mess that it is right now.

Rod
 

Econ101

Well-known member
Banning MBM in chickenfeed would also increase the cost of chicken feed and increase the cost of the major competitor.

They are using turkey guts to make oil. I say make more oil, feed no MBM and other by products back to animals that haven't the biological history of eating these type of feeds.

It just makes sense.

News Front Page > Home
Turkey Fuel? Factory to Turn Guts Into Crude Oil
Nicole Davis
for National Geographic News
November 25, 2003

As Americans prepare to gobble down 45 million turkeys on Thursday, a factory in Carthage, Missouri, is turning the feathers and innards of the feted bird into a clean-burning fuel oil. Changing World Technologies (CWT), a New York environmental technology company that is behind the project, also has plans to turn the organic waste from chickens, cows, hogs, onions, and Parmesan cheese into light crude oil—and those are just the some of CWT's proposed ventures.

The company works such miracles through thermo-depolymerization (TDP), a process by which waste materials are broken down by intensive heat and pressure to produce natural gas, fuel oil, and minerals. The company's CEO, Brian Appel, says he can turn any type of carbon-based waste—be it computers or offal—into combustible fuel. But he admits many people are skeptical.

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Any technology that promises to empty U.S. landfills, reduce dependence on foreign oil, and create a clean-burning crude is going to attract naysayers. While presenting New York City officials with a proposal to reform its municipal waste into fuel, one member of the consumer, environmental, and government reform advocacy group NYPIRG (New York Public Interest Research Group) stood up and said, "This guy isn't for real!"

"Afterwards," says Appel, a towering former college basketball player, "I went over and asked her, 'Who are you?' I had never heard of PIRG."

Appel heard from the group again when U.S. PIRG, the national advocacy office of the state PIRGs, mocked Republicans for including a U.S. $3-a-barrel tax incentive for TDP in the now-derailed energy bill. "After including their cash cows and all the polluter pork they could find," said a U.S. PIRG representative, "energy conferees have moved on to tax breaks for turkeys"—a $95 million dollar break, by U.S. PIRG accounting.

In actuality, CWT says, TDP would have received only a little more than U.S. $150,000 in credits.

Thermo-depolymerization mimics the Earth's own recipe for fossil fuels, but shaves millions of years off the production time. Waste—turkey guts, for instance—is mixed with water and ground into a thick slurry, which is then heated to 500 degrees Fahrenheit (260 degrees Celsius), pressurized at roughly 600 pounds per square inch (42 kilograms per square centimeter), and cooked for about 15 to 60 minutes until the organic material's molecular structure—its polymers—begin to break apart.

Pressure on the mixture is then dropped, releasing steam that is recaptured to power the remaining process. More heat, then distillation, creates the byproducts—natural gas, which is diverted back to fuel the bio-reformer; crude oil, which can be sold to refineries; minerals, to be used in materials like fertilizers; and water.

Barring nuclear waste, anything can yield these goods, according to proponents of the process: 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of tires, for instance, yields 44 pounds (20 kilograms) of oil (along with the other byproducts); a similar quantity of medical waste would result in 65 pounds (30 kilograms) of oil.

Other versions of the process have existed since the 1970s, but only Appel's addition of water and pressurization—instead of incineration, for example—has made the process environmentally friendly and, he claims, 85 percent energy efficient. "For every 100 Btus of energy in the waste that's used, only 15 Btus are needed to power the process," Appel said.

Some find that rate hard to believe. Immediately after a Discover article on TDP appeared in its May issue, bloggers began criticizing Appel's math online. To date, no study of his figures has appeared in an independent, peer-reviewed journal, a sure way to verify his claims. Appel says enough scientists have reviewed his technology, including Jeff Tester, a chemical engineer at MIT who acknowledged in MIT's Technology Review "They have certainly produced the products they've claimed at a smaller scale," but it remained to be seen whether the same results could be replicated at Carthage.

Appel received U.S. $5 million from the EPA to build the $20-million dollar Carthage facility it jointly owns with ConAgra, one of North America's largest packaged food companies. At full capacity, the plant is designed to turn 200 tons of turkey guts into 500 barrels of oil a day. If it performs as expected, proposed plants in Nevada, Colorado, Alabama, and Italy will also get off the ground—and make the oil more competitively priced. Appel estimates he would need around a few dozen plants in operation to put the cost of producing the oil at around $10 a barrel. The price could drop further as more plants are built, he says.

Source:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/11/1125_031125_turkeyoil.html
 

DiamondSCattleCo

Well-known member
Exactly Econ. We seem to live forever in the fear of 'oooooo, if we do this, Company X will go under and all those jobs will be lost'. As long as demand exists for a product like chicken feed or dog food, there will be a market for all feed mills. If the financial survival of the company depends on MBMs, then I have to ask why the organization has the CEO that it does. You never hinge an entire business on one variable or one input.

Rod
 

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