R-CALF
Cattle market fundamentals remain unchanged while psychology shifts the market due to the President’s comments and industry interference.
R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard says the cattle market is fundamentally broken citing years of an inverse relationship between falling cattle prices and increasing retail beef prices when the only ingredient in beef is cattle.
The U.S. lamb market functioned properly until the early 1990s as domestic production was clearly responsive to changes in domestic demand, argues the R-CALF CEO.
Why are we losing cattle producers and cattle in the face of all the positive economic factors, asks the R-CALF CEO?
A third column grappling with some of the baffling claims regarding international trade. The focus here is specifically on the noise surrounding the imports of live cattle.
Industry trade associations have “downplayed the impact imported cattle and beef have on the U.S. cattle industry,” claims R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard, in a response to a column by Drovers’ contributing editor Nevil Speer.
Do America’s trade policies push ranchers out of business? That’s a protectionist’s view, but there’s no evidence suggesting ranchers “displaced” by beef imports – nor being unduly damaged in the marketplace.
There’s a lot of rhetoric surrounding beef trade that we shouldn’t accept at face value. A closer look at the data shows America’s ranchers are the direct beneficiaries of international trade.
Critics of U.S. beef’s trade activity claim imports distort domestic cattle prices. But actual data tells a much different story.
Misinformation and conspiracy theories regarding the use of mRNA vaccines in livestock continue, despite efforts of the scientific community, who emphasize, “mRNA from a vaccine will NOT be passed along in meat.”
Fifty groups and organizations recently sent a letter to Congress members encouraging reintroduction of the American Beef Labeling Act in 2023.
Attacks on the checkoff is only weakening the beef industry , says John Robinson, vice president of Membership and Communications, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.
Industry groups react to details of a new United States-Mexico-Canada (USMC) Agreement with Canada and Mexico.
NCBA calls lawsuit allegations “without merit,” and R-CALF a “front group for activists seeking to divide the industry, lessen beef demand and drive producers out of business.”
Some 13 years later, tensions remain high over America’s beef checkoff, with a new legal challenge that seeks to deliver a crippling blow to the state beef councils in 15 states.
The more than $900 margin between producers and packers has the largest industry representatives, that are typically at odds, working together.
The House Ag Committee passed the Cattle Contract Library Act of 2021 by unanimous vote on Thursday. Supporters say the act would give greater transparency to cattle markets and more leverage to producers.
Monday’s reveal of the Senate’s updated cattle market reform bill generated some strong opinions from a cross-section of industry stakeholders, but no consensus.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th District rejected claims that two working groups formed to discuss radio frequency identification violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
Concerned about consolidation of the feeding industry, R-CALF has asked the FTC and DOJ to investigate the degree of buyer power beef packers exercise over feedlots – in particular, the 77 largest feedlots.
There’s irony in R-CALF’s recent Market Reform bill 180-degree about face. The ranch group “presumably figured out what we’ve known all along: the cure is worse than the disease,” writes columnist Nevil Spear.
Two new economic analyses of the U.S. cattle markets suggest Congress “must do more” to implement reforms, says R-CALF USA. University economists note neither study has passed peer-review.
A new nonprofit civil rights group has filed a lawsuit seeking to add nine documents to the record in R-CALF’s suit against USDA over the government’s attempts to implement mandatory RFID eartags for cattle and bison.
R-CALF and the National Farmers Union ask the Federal Trade Commission to correct “substantive conflicts” seen between existing federal law and USDA’s “past, present and future meat labeling schemes.”
During a Facebook Live address to cattlemen Monday night, R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard outlined four actions his group proposes to “restore balance to our dysfunctional cattle markets.”
R-CALF USA will submit “formal objections” after last week’s ruling for summary judgement by a Montana magistrate judge in R-CALF’s lawsuit against 15 Qualified State Beef Councils.
National Beef, the fourth largest beef packer in the U.S., has announced that the company’s purchase of Iowa Premium has been finalized.