Meat-loving Americans will stick with beef despite a second U.S. case of mad cow disease, analysts and trade groups said on Sunday, even if cattle markets have the jitters.
I have to have some hope and I guess this is it. I know the markets down a little and what will happen there is anybodies guess. I probable should have taken the offer the buyer gave me earlier this year but I can't worry about that now.
Here's one interesting story on this whole thing. Taiwan closed there market to US beef again but consumers aren't as scared and are buying up the meat.
One woman, who did not identify herself, said she was not put off by the government ban on importing beef from the U.S. "I see lots of other people buying it so I think there's no reason I shouldn't buy it myself," she said.
Another man said it would be difficult to break the habit of buying American beef.
"We really like to eat it, and buy quite a bit," he said.
What is interesting in this whole thing is how giddy the Canadian cattlemen and press is over the discovery of more BSE. They don't appear to care how it affects consumer sentiment on beef or on markets in general, their just happy to inflict more pain on the cattle industry as a whole and rub it in. Hope their having fun, it only hurts them too in the long run.
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. Václav Havel
I've always talked about the good of the industry, you just read everything I say through your prejudices. I feel sorry for you that your giddy about this.
I was never happy that Canadian or British or any cow has BSE. I've always been concerned for the industry as a whole.
If the American discovery of BSE puts into motion the reopening of the border to live cattle that would make me happy (even giddy and gleeful), but you can't convince me that if the shoe were on the other foot you wouldn't feel the same way.
Regardless of whether there is a common herd or not across Canada and the U.S., we have a common economy and we breath common air and drink common water. Remember that borders are just a line that somebody drew on a map. The 49th parallel is simply a figment of somebody's imagination (can you put a piece the 49th parallel in my hand?). Notwithstanding the fact that it's the government and industry's responsibility to protect the consumers and must build safeguards into the system, why can't the protectionist U.S. ranchers, packers and politicians simply let the market decide what's going to happen? Why are they using the courts and the legislation to protect their own livelihoods? Isn't that going against the entire notion of the capitalist state that the Americans so love?