R-CALF USA CEO Recaps Annual Meeting

With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.

Coming out of their recent annual meeting, I had a chance to catch up with Bill Bullard this week. Since 2001, Bullard has been serving as the CEO for R-CALF USA. Several big discussions were had at their meeting including the continued push for mandatory country of origin labeling…

“We need to restore competition to the entire live cattle and beef supply chain. And the best way to do that is with mandatory country of origin labeling for beef.”

Bullard went on to say that this is the only way to empower consumers to exercise choices at the grocery store and for those choices to translate into demand signals upstream…

“In other words, you can’t have a competitive market if your ultimate customer cannot choose your distinct product.”

And, he says that because of the nature of how U.S. beef is often produced, that label needs to be mandatory to ensure it gets to the consumer…

“Well that’s because we have a multi-segmented live cattle supply chain. Most cow/calf producers, for example, sell their calves months before they’re ever delivered to a meat packer. And once they sell the animal, they lose any control whatsoever to require the resultant meat to be labeled as to its country of origin.”

Again Bill Bullard, he is the R-CALF USA CEO, recapping with me their annual meeting.