SASKATOON – Brad Wildeman sees a challenging future for the beef industry as his term as president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association nears its end.
However, he’s convinced the sector will adapt and survive.
Speaking recently to producers attending the Saskatchewan Beef Industry Conference, he pointed to past issues, such as imports of European beef in the 1970s and the BSE crisis in the 2000s as evidence that producers are resilient.
“We still have a future ahead of us,” he said. “We’ve survived these things before.”
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He urged producers to become involved and ensure that survival. Seek out the facts, he added, and stay informed.
“Simply staying home bitching and complaining doesn’t get the chores done,” he said.
“There is no right to farm. There’s not enough money in this world for government to fix this industry if we don’t fix it ourselves.”
He said he has learned that politicians respond to voters, and public opinion can trump good science or common sense. Strong industry organizations provide critical representation to government.
There will be more issues for beef producers to deal with, many of them driven by consumers.
For example, the Humane Societies of the United States recently bought shares in Jack in the Box and Domino’s Pizza restaurants to influence animal welfare practices.
A recall issued in mid-January for 864,000 pounds of ground beef in southern California because it might contain E. coli doesn’t help the industry’s safety claims, Wildeman added.
He said 80 percent of American high-end restaurants are reporting lower sales, and these are the outlets that typically sell more higher-valued cuts.
“Consumer confidence continues to struggle,” he said.
Consumers will further question production practices and food safety, putting producers under pressure to do things differently.
European efforts to limit the time animals spend in transport will affect producers in Canada and Australia, he said, even though the geography is different.
On the domestic front, he said the industry must continue to work for better business risk management programs and a more competitive, viable packing sector.
Governments responded to the BSE crisis by saying Canada didn’t have enough packing capacity, he added, but didn’t make it easy for new plants to do business.
“A lot of good people put a lot of their hard earned savings into the packing plants and the reality was the business model and the regulatory cost in this country, particularly for over 30 month cattle, simply is too high for them to be competitive,” he said.
