What's the future for the U.S. beef industry?

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Those of us in the cow-calf business are winding down the season of highest highs and lowest lows — calving season. New life and the sight of young healthy calves running on old corn stalks or green grass pastures are heady and joyous events for the cow-calf producer. Breach births, prolapses, too big or weak calves, muddy and wet ground or parasite problems are morale defeating. Somehow we always manage to pull through the low times, and like all Cub fans, we think ... next year will be better.

This year, however, the beef industry is facing other even more disturbing events. The first is (was) of course, the animal abuse incident at the California based Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. plant. The treatment of the animals was WRONG; the penalties were pure punishment based in fear and media outrage. The largest meat recall in U.S. history, 143 million pounds, was meaningless in that a large portion of this meat had already been consumed. The scare of BSE, not science, prompted this knee jerk reaction. No evidence of BSE was ever brought up, or proven, nor has there been any reported illness. There are rules and procedures in place to ensure humane treatment of animals at processing plants. These rules were abused. It has been over two months, and all investigations have shown food safety rules were not violated.

There are questions that cattlemen would like answered by the Humane Society of the United States. The first would be why, if they truly cared about animal welfare, did they wait more than 30 days to make their footage of abuse public? This then leads to, what is HSUS’ real agenda?

Animals slip and fall in transit and in the alley-ways of processing plants. These falls may result in the animal becoming ambulatory. Downer cattle have been largely banned from the food supply since 2003. This banning was not put in place to reduce the risk of BSE entering the human food supply. Inspectors from the USDA are supposed to be present at unloading and transfer of animals to delineate between true downer cattle and recent ambulatory cattle. The HSUS video footage never addressed this issue of already down or recently downed. Humane handling abuses occurred; inspection violations occurred; food safety was not in jeopardy. The shock value of HSUS’ video, much like Oprah’s in 2003, were meant to undermine the public’s faith in the U.S. beef industry and the U.S. cattlemen.

Good things will happen because of this video. USDA will rotate inspectors and speed up the rate of inspections, so visits are not predictable. USDA will also make use of off-site video and prioritize inspections on a set of criteria to zero in on the most likely offenders of animal handling regulations.

Safe guarding the handling of livestock and preventing needless suffering of animals is good; using scare tactics to undermine the consumer’s confidence in the American cattleman is deplorable.

The second event facing the beef industry is the proposed purchase by JBS (a South American beef conglomerate) of National Beef Packing, Smithfield Food’s beef operations and Five Rivers Cattle Feeding. Put this together with the last year’s purchase by JBS of Swift & Co., and JBS becomes the largest beef packer in the world.

We have seen what packer concentration has done in the other business. Total vertical integration in poultry with pork not that far behind. In other words, packer ownership from birth to the supermarket. Having three to four buyers bidding on my calves instead of eight to 10 is bad enough; having just one is downright scary, particularly if that one buyer is from out of the country.

Tyson’s heavy investment in overseas poultry is threatening U.S. poultry production. Monsanto pushed glyphosate technology down corn and soybean producers’ throats with great effectiveness and less cost, however today, China is basically the only producer of glyphosate, and the price has tripled or better in just one year.

The Packers & Stockyards Act of 1921 was supposed to preserve competitive bidding and prevent the consolidations and mergers we have seen in all business sectors over the last 20 years. This act has not been enforced in those 20 years, and we will pay for it. “Company” towns didn’t last; how do you think a “company” country could. A cheap and safe food supply is one thing; a “cheap at what cost” food supply is another.

Larry Magnuson is on the board of the Illinois Beef Association.