COOL Consideration

Idaho Cattle Association’s Wyatt Prescott talk to me about one of the considerations that packing plants have with regard to COOL: “It requires processing facilities to have separation of those lines of animals meaning that they have to stop and clean and have dedicated times of when to harvest sourced cattle out of those countries versus the United States. As you know that is an added expense. Whenever you have to shut something down and clean it all from scratch it adds another layer in that expense which of course is absorbed back into the industry. Not only is it an expense, it also means that there is a structure and a schedule, so there is a calendar meaning that if they are going to harvest Canadian or Mexican cattle, they are going to set up a schedule when they do it. They are still going to fulfill those obligations because it is on the calendar in the harvesting facility regardless of whether or not they have those cattle. So if they had a day dedicated to harvesting Canadian cattle, they are going to go up to Canada and if they don’t have their order filled, they are going to buy all that they can. It’s cheaper to bring them down and lose money on those cattle and keep that plant operating versus stopping the chain and cleaning and putting American cattle back in their. So it has almost created this environment where it is required to use packing plants to harvest X quota of these foreign cattle.