A problem looms for cattle producers if American legislation passes requiring country-of-origin labeling on beef and lamb products.
It may also be a wakeup call for Canadian cattle producers who export 54 percent of their product either as beef or live animals. Most of it goes to the United States.
“What it’s hammered home is that we need to become more aggressive and effective in our overseas market and not be so reliant on the U.S. market. This may be the catalyst that gets us in gear,” said Larry Sears, a member of the Canadian Beef Export Federation and a cow/calf producer at Stavely, Alta.
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The U.S. regulations are linked to a bill that deals with farm issues including grazing and beef price reporting. This makes it difficult to stop it from becoming law.
Canadian agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief has spoken with American secretary of agriculture Dan Glickman, who says he is aware of Canadian concerns.
The issue has been dear to the hearts of producers in northern tier states for years. They say imports of Canadian beef and live cattle have disrupted their own sagging market. American domestic demand for beef has dropped from 41 kilograms per capita in 1976 to just over 29 kg in 1997. The price paid to producers has declined along with consumption.
“There is a tremendous amount of emotion driving this but there’s also a big lobby against where it’s at now as it goes before the conference committee next week,” said Sears.
An economic impact analysis should have been done before the bill got this far, he said.
Cattle producers are puzzled the bill doesn’t include pork, even though Canada exports significant amounts of pork and live hogs to the U.S.
The National Beef Cattlemen’s Association supports the bill because it believes labeling would entice more consumers to buy American-produced meat.
Locally processed
American federal law now requires most imports, including beef, to bear labels indicating country of origin when they enter the U.S. However, once non-retail items are inside the U.S. and are further processed, USDA meat and poultry inspection laws consider the products to be domestic.
Wendy Peay, of the Washington Cattle Feeders, said the cow-calf producing states of the Dakotas, Washington, Montana, Oregon and Wyoming are concerned about Canadian imports, but the feeders have a different perspective.
While she doesn’t think legislation will affect the number of cattle bought by the IBP plant at Pasco, Wash., it will affect the feeding sector. The Washington cattle feeders didn’t favor the proposal, “but they didn’t fight it either,” said Peay.
Feeders have a different view of the industry compared to the broader group of cow-calf producers.
“They are much more sophisticated in terms of market knowledge and how prices are determined and what factors affect prices,” Peay said. “The cattlemen in the country blame the packer first, then they blame imports, then they blame the feeder.”
