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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RealMuLan who wrote (271818)	12/23/2003 7:37:56 PM
From: BubbaFred	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

Maybe US will now cancel the embargo on Canadian cattle and beef, or Canadian beef will be in higher demand worldwide. The one incident leading to the embargo of Canadian cattle was from an infected calf that was sent from US to Canada for grazing - common practice because grazing land is so much more economical in the Canadian side. Because of that one incident, and because Canada refused to support the Iraq invasion, Canadian cattle/beef became verbotten to cross the US-Canada border. So much for being neighborly.

To: RealMuLan who wrote (271818)	12/23/2003 9:13:44 PM
From: BubbaFred	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

Report: Japan Bans U.S. Beef Imports TOKYO - Japan indefinitely banned imports of U.S. beef on Wednesday after a cow in Washington state tested positive for mad cow disease, the Agriculture Ministry said, depriving American beef exporters of their largest overseas market. A ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the ban applied to beef and beef products and took effect immediately. U.S. beef exports to Japan totaled US$842 million in 2002, according to the U.S. Meat Export Federation. Japanese authorities have been especially leery about mad cow since the nation's herds suffered the first recorded outbreak of the disease in Asia in September 2001, causing meat consumption to plunge. Consumption, however, has since rebounded. Tokyo moved ahead with the ban despite assurances from U.S. officials that the American beef supply was safe. Mad cow disease, known also as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, eats holes in the brains of cattle. It sprang up in Britain in 1986 and spread through countries in Europe and Asia, prompting massive destruction of herds and decimating the European beef industry. A form of mad cow disease can be contracted by humans if they eat infected beef or nerve tissue, and possibly through blood transfusions. The human form of mad cow disease so far has killed 143 people in Britain and 10 elsewhere, none in the United States. Blood donors possibly at risk for the disease are banned from giving. story.news.yahoo.com

To: RealMuLan who wrote (271818)	12/24/2003 8:50:22 PM
From: BubbaFred	Respond to of 436258

Some good news from mad cow No one would claim BSE has been a positive thing, but it has spurred some needed creative thinking Nov. 25, 2003. 01:00 AM LAURA RANCE CARMaN, MAN. — You can see the victims of Canada's BSE crisis on the evening news — farmers who shoot their now worthless animals and then call in the cameras to swarm over the spoils of disaster. What you have not seen are the survivors, the people who are quietly adjusting to a bleak reality. Mad cow disease has changed the economics of the cattle industry in this country for the foreseeable future, if not forever. When a case of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) shut the border to beef exports on May 20, $3 billion in equity disappeared from this country's cow herd overnight. Manitoba, which is predominantly a beef breeding province, may have been hardest hit. There are 10,500 beef producers in the province who produce calves every spring and sell them at weaning time in the fall. There are few slaughter plants in the province. Most calves go to feedlots in other provinces or the U.S. Manitoba cattle usually go the U.S. for slaughter. Last year, 31,000 animals from Manitoba were processed in Canada, compared with more than 200,000 that went south. That effectively meant that Manitoba farmers were largely left out of the $520 million in government subsidies to compensate Canadian farmers for the collapse in market prices. If farmers couldn't find an abattoir to slaughter their animals, they couldn't claim the compensation. Because of the way the production system has evolved, culling rates in the industry are relatively high, about 10 per cent a year for beef and up to 30 per cent for dairy. Between 20 and 30 per cent of a cow-calf producer's annual return has traditionally come from the sale of these cull animals. These are usually adult cows who have failed to become pregnant or deliver a live calf. Some are just old. Regardless of the reason, the economic thing to do has been to sell them for meat and replace them. Although the border is expected to open to trade in live animals younger than 30 months sometime next year, it may be years before export of older animals will resume. Their value has dropped 75 per cent, which is why a few farmers have taken to shooting them rather than hauling them to the auction market for a paltry 3 or 4 cents per kilogram. The survival strategy for most Manitoba farmers has been to hunker down and hope for the best — or at the very least, another subsidy to help tide them over until the markets return. But there are some creative ideas surfacing. About 2,000 farmers have contributed $100 apiece for a feasibility study into the Ranchers' Choice Co-operative, which is exploring whether farmers can buy a Winnipeg hog slaughtering plant and convert it to a beef plant to market the meat from cull cows. It's far from a sure thing, but such an enterprise could increase farmers' returns by extending their reach further up the food chain. Still others are concluding that one way to recoup some of the value lost in the cull cow market is to stop culling so many cows. The emphasis in cow herd management in recent years has been on producing as many kilograms of calf per cow per year as possible. Breeding programs are designed to produce big calves early, so that the calf sold in the fall earns the highest possible return. It's an approach that's been profitable, but costly and hard on the breeding cows. The cows are in their final trimester just as they enter the coldest months of the Prairie winter — when much of their energy is devoted to simply staying warm. Winter calving conditions can be brutal. The risk of losing a newborn calf to hypothermia requires checking the herd hourly. Breeding for heavy calves places cows at higher risk of requiring human help with birthing. Many develop fertility problems, contributing to the high cull rates. Some researchers and a few farmers have for years touted a kinder, gentler production focus. The herd's birthing cycle is timed for a late spring calving season, one that is more in tune with the cow's natural production cycle. The breeding stock is selected for easy calving, which usually means slightly smaller calves. To make this system work, the calves are kept on the farm for their first winter and placed on pasture the following spring before being sold when they are 16 months old. Manitoba, with an abundance of good-quality grassland, is well-suited to this type of production system. The profitability is typically higher due to the lower costs associated with producing the kilograms of beef sold. But it also takes longer and most producers have been willing to compromise a little of that profitability for immediate cash flow. Current conditions may force them to think again. So while no one could claim the BSE crisis is a good thing, the collapse of the cull market is creating pressures that could strengthen Manitoba's beef sector over the long term. -------------------------------------------- Laura Rance is associate editor of the Farmers' Independent Weekly in Manitoba. torontostar.com