Published: November 07, 2008 09:47 am            

Cattlemen’s convention leaving the Twin Cities

Originally published in the Oct. 31, 2008, print edition.

The 2008 Minnesota State Cattlemen’s Association and Minnesota State Cattlewomen’s Association Annual Convention and Trade Show is going country.

After many years in the Twin Cities, this year’s event, Dec. 5-6, will be at Cragun’s Resort on Gull Lake in the Brainerd area.

“This new location offers unique opportunities,” said Dar Giess, chairman of the MSCA Cow-Calf and Stocker Council. “You can look forward to a full schedule of industry speakers, seminars, meeting and social events.”

Internationally recognized bio-security expert Steve Van Wie will be one of the featured speakers. Van Wie will discuss the social impacts and the management challenges of animal disease emergencies based on his extensive experience in Great Britain’s foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in 2001, which resulted in the cremation of thousands of cattle.

“We’re excited about this year’s convention with this move to Cragun’s Resort,” said Deb Dahlke, MSCA executive director. She indicated trade show vendors are especially pleased with this relocation because it is so much easier to move trailers and trade show equipment into a resort area than it is to get positioned into a Twin Cities hotel. Plus it’s cheaper to do a trade show outside the Twin Cities area, both in terms of lodging and rental space.

“And there will be lots of special entertainment and activities for the children, too.”

Past MSCA conventions have averaged around 200 people. Dahlke is certain that with this change in location, attendance will be considerably higher this year and she’s also confident more families will make this their early Christmas get-away. “We’re saving miles for a lot of our membership by meeting at Cragun’s,” she said.

Like most producer groups, membership is always a concern. However, membership in the MSCA is up the past couple of years. “Our membership is only a fraction of the total beef producers in Minnesota and that’s frustrating since MSCA works for all cattle producers, even those not a paid member,” Dahlke said.

COOL added work, benefit

Regarding the country of origin labeling issue, she said producers talk about the added cost, the labor and the record keeping entailed with this new livestock identification program. Timing is bad for this new program in view of expanded production costs for cattlemen the past couple of years.

John Schafer, a long-time Renville County beef producer and now a member of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Board, sees COOL as an ongoing challenge for the beef industry but perhaps with long-term benefits especially as it pertains to exports of U.S. beef.

“Because it is U.S. Department of Agriculture-controlled and has been such a hot political issue, we don’t take sides necessarily. We market generic beef, we promote beef in general on the basis of value, nutrition and health benefits,” said Schafer, who serves on the NCBB Product Enhancement Committee.

He knows many countries already have beef identification programs and these countries export beef to the United States, so this beef can be traced to country of origin, even farm of origin if/when necessary.

Schafer said that if consumers ask for country of origin information, then U.S. producers will need to find a consistent and economical way to provide this.

“I see numbers all over the board as to what countries, and to what extent, ID data can be provided. There are still a lot of opinions out there as to how big an issue this is with consumers. The beef board does spend money exporting U.S. beef to other countries and one of the things we see when trying to get U.S. beef into other countries is that we do not have a trace-back system in this country that meets the protocol they demand. In the export market, sometimes those details can be very stringent and meeting them for one country doesn’t assure you that you’ve met protocols in another country.”

Schafer said however that U.S. beef exports have strengthened considerably in recent months, partly due to the lower value of the U.S. dollar and also due to unique quality standards of U.S. beef.

“Our beef that meets their protocol standards gets snapped off the shelves quickly. In Korea, U.S. beef is a cheaper product than that of the competition,” Schafer said.

“We are the world’s low-cost producer of grain-fed beef. We also are known for quality. Some of our branded beef products simply aren’t available on a comparable quality basis anywhere else in the world.”

Beef industry outlook

With corn and soybean prices being ratcheted down in recent weeks, is there a brighter outlook for the Minnesota cattle feeder? Definitely so but the uncertainty persists because fat cattle prices have also declined. Feeder cattle prices are staying skittish which indicates it doesn’t yet have a particular direction in mind.

Schafer thinks consumers are spending less on high-quality cuts of meats with a bigger shift to hamburger and sliced-meat convenience packages. He also thinks consumers are eating out less and eating at home more which may also slow the movement of primal cuts into the restaurant industry.

U.S. exports of beef and beef variety meats in August surpassed July 2008 totals by almost 15 percent and set a new, all-time monthly record in terms of value, the U.S. Meat Export Federation reported. The record total of $416 million exceeds the previous record of $387 million, set in June 2003, prior to the first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the United States in December 2003, by 7.5 percent.

Through the first eight months of 2008, beef exports have recovered 93 percent of value and 75 percent of volume when compared to August 2003.

        

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