Promoting a burger as a healthy choice at the local fast food joint is a tall order for the Beef Information Centre.
It will be going up against chicken and salads as one of the strategies to move more beef from mature animals as borders remain closed to livestock and meat from cattle older than 30 months.
“We need to increase our share of the market from 26 percent to at least 58 percent at minimum,” said Glenn Brand at the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association convention in Calgary on Aug. 18.
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If critical products are unavailable when needed, it could result in unnecessary human and animal deaths in the worst-case scenario.
The Beef Information Centre has been charged with finding a place for this surplus meat in fast food outlets, restaurants and delis.
“We have a lot more to learn about this market and what we need to do to prove our competitiveness. We’re going to look at other countries and how they have been better able to service this market,” he said.
The cattle producers’ plan covers quality research, food safety, new uses for muscle cuts and sales promotions to move more of what is called commercial beef.
When borders closed in May 2003, there was an immediate oversupply of cattle and subsequent poor prices at the auction for cull animals. There were inadequate facilities to handle cows and bulls, and the surplus rapidly built on the farm where cull animals were held for another year of breeding or killed for personal consumption.
In 1985, there were 135 federal plants capable of handling this product, but now there are 19.
To handle the normal cull rate of eight percent on beef cows and 21 percent on dairy cows, the kill needs to be 13,000 head per week. At present, about 10,000 are killed weekly in federally inspected and provincial plants.
Before May 2003, Canada imported large quantities of commercial beef from Australia, New Zealand and South America. It was cheaper, more consistent and often leaner than the domestic offering. In 2002, Canada imported 314,000 tonnes of beef of which 131,000 came from Argentina, Uruguay or New Zealand. The beef is typically used for products like burgers, meatballs, sausage, wieners or bologna.
“Further processors here in Canada built their plants and their product lines around using imported beef products to meet their requirements,” Brand said.
Canadian further processors used about 48,000 tonnes of Canadian beef from mature animals, or about 22 percent of overall production. They required about 178,000 tonnes, of which 74,000 tonnes were used for table meat and the rest for grinding.
Canada has cut back imports and manufacturers are encouraged to try the domestic product, but there are problems with the size of cuts, fat content and colour of Canadian cow and bull meat.
“A lot of people think the product is interchangeable when it is clearly not,” said Brand.
Still, Canadian processors could displace 50-60 percent of the imported beef with domestic meat, Brand said.
“The challenge with that is it would still leave a surplus of about 48,000 tonnes of product.”
Overall, Canadians have proved loyal to the homegrown product.
In 2002, domestic beef consumption stayed relatively stable at 900,000 tonnes per year. In 2003, domestic consumption jumped to one million tonnes of beef for the first time.
