Beef News

I saw recently that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) wanted to allow the importation of Japanese beef in to the US. I thought this was laughable since they are a beef starved country and have very little beef to export to the US. I assumed they were just doing it to try to get the Japanese market open to US beef and accepted that as a price of doing business. R-Calf was going to oppose it and that should be enough.

Now I see the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) is opossing this move too. Has the NCBA grown a set of gonads or what? I personally don't think so, the big meat packers that control the NCBA have no stake in letting Japanese processed meat into the US so they are opposing it. It isn't like cheap Canadian beef which they want to process and make a ton of money on so it's no big deal to them. I am just suprised the NCBA took a stand on the issue, it's so rare for them to oppose what the USDA wants that it is note worthy.

One other quick note, I see the Canadians shipped a cow over 30 months of age to slaughter in the US against the import rules established for bringing Canadian cattle into the US. For "safety" reasons some beef was recalled because of it. I know this case violated the rules and needed to be acted upon but really, you have a better chance of getting hit by lightning than you do of getting BSE. Was all this really neccassary?

Business is thirty percent patience. Chinese proverb