RENO, Nev. — If a merger proposed by the four cattle groups in the United States goes through, American beef producers will be one organization by the summer of 1995.
The presidents of the National Cattlemen’s Association, (NCA) Cattlemen’s Beef Board, U.S. Meat Export Federation and Beef Industry Council have been talking about amalgamating. A 14-member task force made up of representatives from each group wants the four to become one by July 1995. The plan was approved without opposition by the 4,000 cattle producers attending the annual NCA meeting here.
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The task force said the merger is necessary to build a stronger organization to fight declining beef consumption, to counter complaints about meat quality and to deal with criticism from cattlemen who say there’s too much administration and splits within the industry.
The report said the industry must speak with one voice. Together they must work to identify quality complaints, find new markets and solve public image problems. These include disputes over the use of federal lands, animal welfare, poor beef quality and food safety questions, said Mardie Hanson of the Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board.
Must move quickly
“We need to move quickly on it (the merger),” said incoming NCA president Dan Koons.
“We can’t afford the time to debate this for seven years. We’re losing market share annually and the longer we debate it, quite frankly, the more problems we’ll have,” he said in an interview.
The amalgamation will be handled by several transition teams. The plan is for a single chief executive officer, one head office, one board of directors and a smaller staff, all under a new name.
The $1 mandatory checkoff collected on each animal sold in the U.S. will provide an annual budget of $80 to $100 million. Now the money is split among the groups for research and promotion purposes.
Besides funding promotion and research, NCA handles lobbying and policy directives. Money for lobbying is earned through membership dues. About 37,000 producers belong to the NCA even though there are 900,000 in the country.
Become consumer driven
Task force chair Rob Adams said one of the main aims of the new organization will be to make the beef industry consumer-driven rather than producer-driven.
The task force has already laid out goals for the new organization.
The first will be to stop the decline of domestic beef consumption by 1997. U.S. department of agriculture figures show beef holds 38.6 percent of the market, poultry has 32.9 percent and pork 28.6 percent of the meat pie.
The second goal is to expand the American beef market worldwide from today’s share of nine percent to 18 percent in 1997, earning U.S. producers an additional $4 billion a year. Exports to Japan and Canada will be stepped up by a percentage point and two percent more will be shipped to Mexico and Korea. Another aspect of that goal is to establish U.S. beef as a world standard for food quality and safety.
