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When a freeze hit the foothills and Prairies, these cattle south of Longview, Alta., still found forage on relatively snow-free pastures, the snows swept away by the westerly winds. PHOTO: WENDY DUDLEY
Canada Beef charting its own course Rob Meijer says straw man report offers an ‘interesting perspective’ but Canada Beef has its own plan for boosting the fortunes of the beef industry BY JENNIFER BLAIR AF STAFF
T
he newly formed Council of Beef Leaders may be missing a key player when it meets later this winter. “The beef industry has enough structures and organizations and committees,” said Rob Meijer, president of Canada Beef Inc. “We’re not of the view that we need yet another one. “We are nowhere near accepting of an advisory council.” The council is one of the key
recommendations of the Straw Man Beef Industry Initiative, an effort aimed at finding a fix for some of the critical issues bedevilling Canada’s beef industry. But Meijer said the report is just “a set of recommendations” that industry players could adopt at their own discretion. “We take this and any other report with interest,” he said. “Where we are not at is taking the recommendations and building them into our strategy.” The recommendations from the report echo much of the work that
is already underway at Canada Beef, said Meijer. “I see a lot of us already in the report,” he said, calling it an “indirect pat on the back. “We’re on the right track, and I feel really good to see that in the report.” And while the report offers an “interesting perspective” for the Canada Beef board to consider, the organization will continue to move forward with its own strategy, he said. “At the end of the day, the provinces fund our organization, and we take our direction from
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and make Canadian beef the “preferred” choice at home and abroad. The report’s recommendations have been well received and have “pretty good support” from cattle feeders, said Bryan Walton, chief executive officer of the Alberta Cattle Feeders’ Association. “We believed in this from the beginning,” said Walton. Unlike Meijer, Walton said he welcomes the creation of the leaders’ council as a forum where “high-level, strategic perspectives” can be discussed.
the provinces,” said Meijer. “We respect the work of the straw men, but that is not who we take our direction from.”
Others supportive
The “straw men” — agri-food marketing specialist Kim McConnell and cattlemen David Andrews and John Kolk — developed the recommendations in response to a stinging critique by the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, which slammed the beef industry for being complacent and lacking a strategy to succeed. Their report laid out a path for creating a “results-based” strategy to grow the national herd
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