The biggest challenge facing beef producers since May 20 is moving mature cows and bulls to market, says Glen Brand.
The retail manager of the Beef Information Centre, who is also a member of the national cull cow working committee, said a January meeting is scheduled with the further processing sector, food service groups and retail representatives.
“It’s going to take a co-ordinated gate to plate strategy if we are going to have success addressing this problem,” he told the Alberta Beef Producers annual meeting Dec. 10 in Calgary.
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It could take a three to five year strategy because exports on older animals are not expected to resume any time soon. Before bovine spongiform encephalopathy closed borders, most mature cows and bulls were exported live or as beef to the United States.
The cow problem is felt keenly across the beef and dairy sectors where animals were devalued sharply in the last eight months. Mature cattle sold for a few pennies a pound.
“If you go to an auction market the ownership of this problem is concentrated in the hands of producers,” he said.
The problem exacerbated because under world trade agreements, Canada imports lean beef from Australia, New Zealand and Uruguay to use in prepared meats, wieners and ground beef.
The cull cow working group must learn how many more cows can be processed in Canada and what barriers confront them so they can replace the foreign product. There are a number of issues.
Processors often use beef from several different countries and then export the finished products to the U.S.
But they are banned from using Canadian beef from animals over 30 months in their recipes and must establish a segregation program to use the meat from mature animals while continuing to export other products to the U.S.
Another problem is consistent supply. Culling animals is often a seasonal decision so it is difficult for processors to forward contract supplies.
Quality of the meat is an issue. Canadian product tends to be fattier and does not work as well in some mixes, so hip cuts have been mixed in with the beef trim to lower the fat level.
Nevertheless, the growing mountain of beef must be used.
Last year Canada used 178,000 tonnes of cow meat, but the domestic share was only 26 percent of the total. The hope is to increase Canadian meat to half of processor requirements.
In 2002, Canada processed about 10,000 cows per week. In the first week of December, about 7,000 were killed but there have been periods where cow and bull slaughter was around 3,000.
“We have the capacity to kill 13,000 if we need to, but the challenge is whether the capacity is necessarily where the supply is,” he said.
In the next 12 months there could be 716,129 head of dairy and beef culls. Beef culls could be around seven percent but dairy may be as much as 25 percent.
Brand said 600,000 mature animals equal about 150,290 tonnes of beef.
