Riding Herd “The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.” – JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
August 15, 2019 • www.aaalivestock.com
Volume 61 • No. 8
The Programs BY LEE PITTS
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t will soon be Fall and the time for falling leaves and falling cattle prices. It will also be time for 20% of the ranchers in the country who calve in the Fall to buy their predominately yearling bulls so they’ll be ready for turnout around the first of December. For ranchers in Spring calving country, which is most of the country, it’s time for ranchers to clip coupons. The two activities, buying bulls and selling calves, have always been closely related but now they are even more intertwined.
Going, Going, Gone If there was an anthem for the livestock marketing sector for the past three decades it would be a knock-off of Pete Seeger’s “Where Have all the Bidders Gone?” According to R CALF CEO Bill Bullard, we’ve lost 75% of our independent feedlots and nearly 80% of all beef packing plants since 1980. For the past 20 years farmer-feeders have been exiting the auction barn faster than diners at a Farm Bureau supper serving bad beans or e coli salad. That’s a lot of buying power that’s gone missing and if not replaced by another source of buyers, the beef business would already look like the pork and poultry industries where your only decision would be whose 24 page contract you signed. Thankfully, another group of buyers has stepped in to fill the void, a group referred to by livestock auctioneers as “program cattle”.
Partners in Quality
NEWSPAPER PRIORITY HANDLING
The first “program” I ever
When you’re young and you fall off a horse, you may break something. When you’re my age, you splatter. - Roy Rogers heard about was one started by the Harris Feeding Company in Coalinga, California. It was called Partners in Quality and it came about for basically two reasons: in 1982 Harris started one of the first branded beef companies in the U.S. and reason number two was it was tired of paying premium prices on the video sales for the type of cattle it needed for its fledgling branded beef program. At the time I was a small shareholder and the announcer for Western Video Market, the second largest livestock marketing video company. We thought at the time that Partners In Quality was Harris’ answer to the video sale. In California Harris is literally the 800 pound gorilla in the room. I can remember many sales when they pur-
chased nearly half our offering. Feeding 125,000 head of cattle at a time and a quarter million a year required lots of cattle coming off grass and when they were “off the market,” as they sometime were, we were really worried at the video as to who would step forward and buy the cattle. Twenty-five years ago if you drove by the Harris feedyard just off California’s main artery, I-5, you’d see a yard full of Holstein and Mexican cattle. When Harris started their own branded label they knew these weren’t the kind of cattle to build a program around. They wanted cattle with a high degree of marbling, small ribeyes, and low fat. In short, they needed more Angus, but these kind of cattle were selling on the video at prices that
made it difficult to pencil out a profit. So they started Partners In Quality in which they’d target reputation cattlemen and either help them select their bulls at California’s run of Fall Angus bull sales, or sell them Angus bulls they had in inventory. Then they’d buy the cattle from the producers after weaning, coming off grass as yearlings or as finished cattle. Prices paid were determined by Cattle Fax. That’s the biggest complaint I’ve heard about the program and that was voiced by a Partner In Quality rancher who is currently President of the the California Cattlemen’s Association. Mark Lacey has always maintained that the prices the Partners receive for their cattle should be based on the video, not the Cattle Fax prices which always seemed to lag video sale prices. Partners in Quality was a big success and the Harris brand of beef quickly became the best you could buy in the meat case. Smaller grocery chains throughout California used Harris beef to compete with the big chain stores who were selling generic beef. Partners in Quality became the first marketing strategy continued on page two
RFID Ear Tags To Be Required USDA Identification for ADT by 2023 BY TIFFANY.DOWELL / TEXAS AGRICULTURE LAW BLOG
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n April, the USDA announced it will be making changes to the mandatory Animal Disease Traceability (ADT) program concerning the type of ear tags that may be used in beef cattle, dairy cattle, and bison. [View Factsheet here.] Keep in mind that this blog post addresses only the federal regulations applicable to interstate transport of livestock. State-specific rules apply to intrastate transport and many states may have import requirements for livestock from other states. For more information on state-specific regulations, click here.
Background The ADT program began in 2013 and requires that for certain animals moving in interstate commerce, an interstate certificate of veterinary inspection (“health certificate”) and official identification must accompany the animal. The ADT program applies to sexually intact beef cattle and bison 18 months of age or older; all female dairy cattle of any age; all dairy males born after 3/11/13; and cattle or bison of any age used for rodeo, show, exhibition, and recreational events. (The program also applies to sheep, goats, horses,
swine, and poultry, but those rules are not being modified at this time, so this blog post will focus only on cattle and bison.) Exceptions apply for animals that are crossing state lines in order to go directly to an approved tagging site (such as a livestock auction), for animals moved directly to slaughter or through no more than one USDA approved livestock facility, and for commuter herds that travel between premises owned by the same person or entity in two different states. Importantly, the USDA is not expanding the scope of the ADT program and these remain the only animals, at least for now, to which the mandatory rules are applicable. Currently, producers can comply with the ADT rules by using dangle tags, electronic ear tags, or metal brite tags. The USDA provides the metal brite tags to producers for free.
Changes The USDA has announced its plan to convert the industry from the tagging system currently used to requiring all producers to utilize RFID tags by 2023. Remember, this still only applies to the category of animals described above (for beef cattle: sexually intact, over 18 months old, transported interstate). The following deadlines apply to this continued on page three
by LEE PITTS
House Calls
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ETA has declared victory in their battle over fur and now they want to go to war over wool. I guess no one has told PETA that you don’t have to kill a sheep to get its wool like you have to kill a mink to get its fur. PETA wants folks to wear only “vegan wool” but isn’t it already? PETA is going after wool because they say there’s a great deal of abuse and inhumane treatment in harvesting wool and I’d agree with them 100%. You see, I was a part-time sheep shearer in my younger days and I gotta tell you, shearing sheep was the hardest work I’ve ever done and my body took the most abuse of any job I’ve ever had. To the sheep it was like getting a haircut but to me it was like being in a big washing machine in the spin cycle for three hours. PETA says that when sheep are sheared there is a lot of punching, kicking and beating going on and that’s true. While in all the years of raising sheep I never beat, punched or kicked a single sheep but shearing just a small farm flock of 30 ewes felt like going 15 rounds with George Foreman. If PETA really wants to do some good for society they ought to form a sister organization to one called PETSS, People For the Ethical Treatment of Sheep Shearers. My shearing business consisted of making house calls that typically went something like this. “Thanks for coming on a Sunday to shear our five ewes but its my only day off.” “That’s okay. How did you find me?” “I called the guy who sheared my sheep last year. He says he quit the business right after he sheared our sheep last year.” “Well, where are these sheep you want me to shear?” “Oh, they’re still out to pasture. I’ve got the flu and thought you wouldn’t mind gathering them for me. Before we begin how much do you charge?” “Well, it’s like the sign at your local mechanic’s shop. If you serve in some sort of an advisory capacity it’s five dollars per head and I get to keep the wool. If you don’t help it’s only two dollars per head plus the wool.” You’d have thought I slapped his mother. “Are
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