Some of you may not like what I’m fixing to say this week, but I can deal with that.
If you have any interest at all in the beef business and haven’t yet read page four, please do so and come back to me.
A dedicated reader alerted me to the American beef being sold in Canadian grocery stores and I went after it like a pitbull. I talked to pretty near a dozen ranchers and almost every single one of them was outraged. And only one allowed me to quote their angry outbursts. And for the record, I don’t think I would have bleeped out the curse words. You know why? Because it’s a genuine and honest reaction, a gut response and beyond all else, it was real. And I can’t be the only one that craves a little realness more than fish craves water. And yet, we’re drowning in our own bullshit and no one wants to acknowledge the stench.
In the course of my cattle industry coverage, I have been fortunate to have encountered folks from all over North America and a few other cattle-producing countries like Australia. Some subscribe and others read the coverage through a mailing list. And this story is a wee bit embarassing. And as the phone became heavier in my hand and this entire sorry situation became heavier in mind, I think I started to lose my grip, just a little.
Rewind a couple few years to the Canadian cattle industry as it bloated and grew, in lust with America’s seemingly insatiable market. And then freeze at May of 2003, the day the cow business stood still.
BSE like a thief in the night descended upon this industry like a plague. And all of a sudden, we start paying attention to American grassroots cattlemen’s group, R-CALF. They received headlines (and numerous death threats) for trying to keep Canadian cattle out of their country.
They were denounced as being opportunistic protectionists trying to finish off an already-crippled industry. And maybe that would have been accurate, if in 1999, had the group not filed a complaint against Canada countervailing and for using the U.S. as a dumping ground for excess cattle.
The theory? That retailers and packers were using cheaper Canadian cattle take a larger margin and to manipulate markets in an effort to force domestic prices down.
Oh, but then it was just free enterprise, right? Painted with self-indignant contempt, we wore our persecution complex like a fine suit and armed with OIE guidelines in one hand and a NAFTA bible in the other, we sent our politicians marching to open those borders. And now fully open, we’re still drowning.
In 2007, we introduced expensive SRM removal laws to safeguard the system from BSE-causing contamination. The brainchild of a CFIA drunk on power and inflated self-worth, the few national packers we had left were stuck with expensive changes in processing, but don’t worry – they shared that burden with cattle producers on the edge of the abyss.
And what of traceability – a beast the U.S. managed to crawl out from under just last week? Who paid for that? The packer? The retailer? The consumer? Yeah, keep guessing.
So instead of reassuring foreign markets with blanket BSE testing like every other country in the world did ­– except for Canada and the U.S. – we just introduced unmanageable, unrealistic and financially impossible regulations, quickening the death of this business.
Perhaps most incredibly, while the government didn’t even blink when sending the industry to its knees with extra legislated costs, it also didn’t even think about holding our trading partners to the same standards. We pay through the nose to send it out and because of ‘free’ trade agreements, we are obligated to bring in foreign meat.
And then under the burden of mounting costs and pressures, the politicians and the big hat cowboys running the industry organizations decide not to take on issues like competition, price discovery and captive supply.
Instead, they decide the best thing for the industry is to try and stop America from telling her people where their beef is coming from.
Is this what your check-off money is paying for?
Do we really want to fight COOL? Do we really want to keep any meat consumer – of any nationality – from knowing where their food was grown? What does that say about us, as producers, as a people?
If I’m going to shop for beef, damn straight I want to know where it’s from. Because I want to support my country, my nation and I expect nothing less from any other nation. How could I not and still be able to look myself in the mirror?
The free trade, free enterprise supporters, they’ll reassure each other in a pseudo-political circle jerk, but they’re not the ones being castrated by a thousand bureaucratic papercuts.
It seems the only way we’re permitted to try and save this industry is by dismantling that of another. How can we fight for market share with brutal trade weapons and still expect to win the heart and stomach of the consumer?
There is a chasm of disconnect between the average producer and those that toy at representing him. Somewhere between the ranch, the CCA and Ottawa, all sense and fairness becomes meaningless. And so desperate are the ranchers, they look down and away and hope for salvation in any form, even if it comes wrapped in hypocrisy.
I’d rather go down fighting for what’s right than choking on the stench we all pretended isn’t there. There’s no victory in saving an industry that has already sold its soul.