EDMONTON – Alberta cattle producers won’t divert money from domestic promotions to boost their Asian advertising.
Delegates at the Dec. 4-6 Alberta Cattle Commission annual convention resoundingly rejected a proposal to siphon 10 percent, or $350,000, from the Beef Information Centre to overseas promotion.
Centre chair and commission delegate Mabel Hamilton said cattle producers shouldn’t rob Peter to pay Tadashi.
“I’m glad to have an endorsement from the delegate body that (the centre) have every cent that is given to it,” said the Innisfail Angus purebred breeder.
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Canada’s point man in Asia said slumping cattle prices may have prompted the bid for a stronger push into an emerging market.
“With prices down, you can either sell more or reduce production and ideally, you would like to sell more because we haven’t even reached capacity in Alberta,” said Canadian Beef Export Federation president Jim Graham, who owns and operates a feedlot near Brooks.
Although 1995 slaughter prices are as much as 60 percent lower than last year, Hamilton said cattle producers can’t lose their gains in the domestic market.
Desperate money, she said, doesn’t make a good investment.
“Cattle prices are low and supply is high and people are panicking because if supply is high, they are looking for more markets,” she said. “Throwing more money at the problems in Asia won’t solve all the problems.
“Some producers are sold on the fact that there’s millions of people over there who are hungry and want into the market.”
The proposal came after cattle producers increased their shares in both foreign and domestic markets.
Dale Wilson, outgoing chair of the commission’s market development committee, said 1995 exports to Asia will nearly double last year’s 11,800 tonnes.
But the gain remains a far cry from the federation’s goal of shipping 115,000 tonnes, or 690,000 head of cattle, to Asia and Mexico by the turn of the century.
“A lot of producers feel the offshore or Asian market is a very important market and they wanted to see more money going to secure that market,” said Wilson, who runs a ranch 20 kilometres east of Drumheller, Alta.
While the federation, which acts as a marriage broker between Canadian packers and Asian importers, opened offices in South Korea and Hong Kong this fall, Graham said Canadian producers lag behind Australian and American competitors in Asia.
The federation’s $8 million budget is dwarfed by $40 million Australian and $26.5 million American in promotional
spending.
But the Beef Information Centre faces a similar dilemma in the domestic market.
While cattle producers might see a little gristle in the centre’s $5.6 million annual budget, it pales in comparison to other competitors’ advertising dollars for a share of the consumer’s stomach.
“The Dairy Board of Canada spends $30 million. In just Ontario alone, dairy producers increased their budget to $19 million,” said the centre’s executive manager Carolyn McDonell.
But beef still registered an impressive gain with domestic consumers.
In 1994 Canadians ate 0.8 kilogram (1.8 pounds) more beef than the previous year. That increase equals about 104,000 head of cattle.
While the export federation can produce hard data on how many tonnes of beef are shipped to Asia, Hamilton said the centre’s impact on increased beef consumption is more difficult to determine.
