Mad Max
Active member
Tuesday, March 8
today's lesson: the boys who cried beef
I draw your attention to an interesting and insightful editorial decrying the protectionist efforts of Montana cattle producers' organization R-CALF. It was published on Sunday, several days after a federal judge issued a temporary injunction keeping the U.S. border closed to imports of live young Canadan cattle, but obviously written before that ruling and with a view towards the possibility of R-CALF finagling a permanent closure of the border.
R-CALF has actually issued and called on its members to distribute - I'm not making this up - a "Safety Alert Fact Sheet" to consumers, grocery store managers, butchers, public health officials and elected officials across the U.S. They've already sent it to elected officials and health departments. Why? To make sure consumers believe that Canadian beef can give them BSE. R-CALF's belief is that if they can get consumers panicked about Canadian beef, they can generate pressure on USDA to rescind the Canadian Final Rule due to go into effect March 7. Then, when panicked consumers find out Canadian boxed beef has been entering the country for months, they can protect themselves by not eating any beef in the U.S. at all until mandatory COOL [country-of-origin labeling] is implemented, according to R-CALF's wishes.
Emphasis mine. Sounds like a scorched-earth policy, hm?
What it boils down to is this: R-CALF is engaged in a high stakes poker game. The stakes are not just R-CALF's $800,000 a year legal affairs budget. They are gambling your money - if you are at all involved anywhere in the beef chain - that they can scare consumers enough to help them achieve their political goals of cutting off beef imports. To them, risking consumer confidence in beef, indeed, risking the future of the whole industry, is a bet they are willing to make, Texas hold'em style, with all their money - and all yours.
They're not only betting everything, they are trying to fill an inside straight. Because they are gambling that if they destroy consumer confidence, if they create a "mad cow" scare and stop the beef market cold, that it will be temporary and they can re-start it later on whenever they want to do so. Such thinking is not only inconceivably, but unbelievably reckless. It is demonstrative of the naiveté of these people who apparently know so little of consumer habits, beef demand and the struggle of the last 30 years to turn this industry around at the consumer level. They evidently imagine that there are magical control valves somewhere to turn demand and consumer confidence in beef safety off and on.
"Magical control valves" ... ha.
The bottom line is that if R-CALF fails in its quest to block Canadian cattle imports, they have stated unequivocally that U.S. consumers should avoid eating beef purchased at U.S. grocery stores unless they wish to risk getting "mad cow" disease. If the USDA goes ahead with implementing the Final Rule on March 7 ... any consumer ignorant of the facts who reads R-CALF's Safety Alert sheet, with its inaccurate information and ridiculous scare tactics, would avoid beef totally.
If R-CALF's lawsuit is successful and the border reopening is delayed, another genie's bottle is uncorked. Any number of R-CALF's misleading, exaggerated and inaccurate conjectures in its legal filing could be quoted in the court's ruling, giving more credence and broad media coverage to such scare statements in the general media. And just as many people feel courts should not be making laws; legal briefs throwing everything attorneys can think of against the wall is not the proper and accurate way to establish scientific fact.
And if the curiosity of consumers is aroused and they read R-CALF's other ridiculous statements about beef's supposed continual "health risks to U.S. consumers," disaster could result.
Frankly, I cannot believe there are 12,000 R-CALF members out there who approve of such reckless brinkmanship with their livelihood. If they are concerned about this high stakes poker game with their life on the line, we suggest they get control of their leadership and its attorneys. This is not about turf. This is about survival of an industry.
No one I'm aware of in America is doing more to try to wreck the beef industry than R-CALF is right now.
Again, emphases throughout are mine.
The author? Steve Dittmer, writing for Cattlenetwork.com which is published by The Agribusiness Freedom Foundation which "promotes free market principles throughout the agricultural food chain."
The AFF is headquartered in Platte City, Missouri. That's right, Missouri, as in "midwestern United States". (A red state, even.) This is not the opinion of a disgruntled Alberta feedlot operator, it's the unvarnished frustration of a pro-free market organization vexed by the "unbelievably reckless" actions of fellow Americans.
today's lesson: the boys who cried beef
I draw your attention to an interesting and insightful editorial decrying the protectionist efforts of Montana cattle producers' organization R-CALF. It was published on Sunday, several days after a federal judge issued a temporary injunction keeping the U.S. border closed to imports of live young Canadan cattle, but obviously written before that ruling and with a view towards the possibility of R-CALF finagling a permanent closure of the border.
R-CALF has actually issued and called on its members to distribute - I'm not making this up - a "Safety Alert Fact Sheet" to consumers, grocery store managers, butchers, public health officials and elected officials across the U.S. They've already sent it to elected officials and health departments. Why? To make sure consumers believe that Canadian beef can give them BSE. R-CALF's belief is that if they can get consumers panicked about Canadian beef, they can generate pressure on USDA to rescind the Canadian Final Rule due to go into effect March 7. Then, when panicked consumers find out Canadian boxed beef has been entering the country for months, they can protect themselves by not eating any beef in the U.S. at all until mandatory COOL [country-of-origin labeling] is implemented, according to R-CALF's wishes.
Emphasis mine. Sounds like a scorched-earth policy, hm?
What it boils down to is this: R-CALF is engaged in a high stakes poker game. The stakes are not just R-CALF's $800,000 a year legal affairs budget. They are gambling your money - if you are at all involved anywhere in the beef chain - that they can scare consumers enough to help them achieve their political goals of cutting off beef imports. To them, risking consumer confidence in beef, indeed, risking the future of the whole industry, is a bet they are willing to make, Texas hold'em style, with all their money - and all yours.
They're not only betting everything, they are trying to fill an inside straight. Because they are gambling that if they destroy consumer confidence, if they create a "mad cow" scare and stop the beef market cold, that it will be temporary and they can re-start it later on whenever they want to do so. Such thinking is not only inconceivably, but unbelievably reckless. It is demonstrative of the naiveté of these people who apparently know so little of consumer habits, beef demand and the struggle of the last 30 years to turn this industry around at the consumer level. They evidently imagine that there are magical control valves somewhere to turn demand and consumer confidence in beef safety off and on.
"Magical control valves" ... ha.
The bottom line is that if R-CALF fails in its quest to block Canadian cattle imports, they have stated unequivocally that U.S. consumers should avoid eating beef purchased at U.S. grocery stores unless they wish to risk getting "mad cow" disease. If the USDA goes ahead with implementing the Final Rule on March 7 ... any consumer ignorant of the facts who reads R-CALF's Safety Alert sheet, with its inaccurate information and ridiculous scare tactics, would avoid beef totally.
If R-CALF's lawsuit is successful and the border reopening is delayed, another genie's bottle is uncorked. Any number of R-CALF's misleading, exaggerated and inaccurate conjectures in its legal filing could be quoted in the court's ruling, giving more credence and broad media coverage to such scare statements in the general media. And just as many people feel courts should not be making laws; legal briefs throwing everything attorneys can think of against the wall is not the proper and accurate way to establish scientific fact.
And if the curiosity of consumers is aroused and they read R-CALF's other ridiculous statements about beef's supposed continual "health risks to U.S. consumers," disaster could result.
Frankly, I cannot believe there are 12,000 R-CALF members out there who approve of such reckless brinkmanship with their livelihood. If they are concerned about this high stakes poker game with their life on the line, we suggest they get control of their leadership and its attorneys. This is not about turf. This is about survival of an industry.
No one I'm aware of in America is doing more to try to wreck the beef industry than R-CALF is right now.
Again, emphases throughout are mine.
The author? Steve Dittmer, writing for Cattlenetwork.com which is published by The Agribusiness Freedom Foundation which "promotes free market principles throughout the agricultural food chain."
The AFF is headquartered in Platte City, Missouri. That's right, Missouri, as in "midwestern United States". (A red state, even.) This is not the opinion of a disgruntled Alberta feedlot operator, it's the unvarnished frustration of a pro-free market organization vexed by the "unbelievably reckless" actions of fellow Americans.
