American producers were alarmed last winter by warnings that a tidal wave of Canadian cattle would flood across the border once exports resumed.
The warnings came from several sources south of the border, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
However, there is no evidence yet to show that those forebodings were correct.
“We told them when they came out with their number that they were dead wrong,” said Anne Dunford of CanFax, a Canadian cattle market analysis group.
Exports of fed cattle are slightly below what they were before BSE was found in Canada and although feeder cattle exports are climbing, they have not reached staggering proportions.
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“This is very much in line with what we expected to see move,” Dunford said. “It’s a little more aggressive on the feeder cattle side, but that’s warranted given the price spread.”
Before BSE, the five-year average for fed cattle exports to the U.S. was 18,000 to 22,000 head per week. Dunford said exports are only now starting to climb back into that range.
Meanwhile, exports of feeder steers and heifers have been between 9,000 and 12,000 head a week this fall, although there was one week when that number reached 15,000. By comparison, the number of feeder cattle shipped to the United States before BSE was more in the range of 4,000 to 5,000 head per week.
“The demographics are definitely different,” said John Masswohl, director of international relations for the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association.
“Traditionally we would send mostly young slaughter and older cull animals and then a very small number of feeder calves.”
The higher cattle prices in the U.S. during the past two years encouraged American producers to send more of their breeding stock to market than they normally would. As a result, American feedlots have found calves harder to come by in the U.S. and they are drawing supplies from Canada to help fill their pens.
Masswohl said there are several reasons why Canadian cattle have not flooded the U.S. market:
- Slaughter capacity has increased in Canada in the past two years, alleviating the need to ship fed cattle south for processing.
- There are more technical requirements for shipping Canadian cattle into the U.S.
- The value of the Canadian currency is much higher than it was before BSE.
- Cattle haulers are harder to get in Canada because of the damage done to their industry during the BSE crisis.
