Packinghouse Alchemy: From Commodity Cattle to Quality Assured Beef

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Packinghouse Alchemy From Commodity Cattle to
Quality Assured Beef

• Ian MacLachlan and Ivan Townshend,
• Department of Geography, University of
  Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, T1K 3M4.
• E-Mail maclachlan_at_uleth.ca
• The Political Economy of Livestock Industry II
• Association of American Geographers
• April 17, 2008

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Structure of Talk

• Global livestock revolution
• Canadas livestock revolution
• Traditional Differentiation of Commodity beef
• New Dimensions of Differentiation
• Conclusions

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Germany The Melander family of BargteheideFood
expenditure for one week 500.07 Favorite foods
fried potatoes with onions, bacon and herring
Chad The Aboubakar family of Breidjing
Camp Food expenditure for one week
1.23 Favorite foods soup with fresh sheep meat  
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Christopher L Delgado R Rising Consumption of
Meat and Milk in Developing Countries Has Created
New Food Revolution The Journal of Nutrition
(2003) Supplement
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CattleProduction
Source FAO
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Pig Production
Source FAO
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Trade
Source UNCTAD 2007 Handbook of Statistics
2006-07. International merchandise trade by
product measured in current U.S.
dollars http//www.unctad.org/Templates/webflyer.a
sp?docid8613intItemID1397lang1modetoc
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Livestock revolution

• Early 1970s to early 1990s
• 50 increase in demand consumption of food of
  animal origin in developing countries
• Meat, eggs and milk
• By 2020
• Majority of supply and production of animal
  commodities will be in developing countries
• Why
• Population growth, urbanization, rising incomes

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Implications of the Livestock Revolution

• Epizootic panzootic disease
• hoof and mouth, bovine TB, rinderpest
• Zoonoses
• Salmonellosis, anthrax, brucellosis, (bacterial)
• Rabies, avian flu, ebola, Nipah virus (viral)
• BSE, CWD, scrapie (prion)
• Food safety
• Risk society
• Massive state infrastructure

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Aesthetic/Humane issues and Mass Livestock
Euthanasia

• Nipah virus (infected pigs spread NiV to humans)
• Natural reservoir in fruit bats of Malaysia
• Zoonotic disease led to encephalitis
  respiratory disease outbreak in Malaysia and
  Singapore in March 1999
• Human infection linked to occupational exposure
  to pigs

• gt 1 million pigs were culled
• euthanized
• 105 human deaths

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Canada's Livestock RevolutionTrade in Selected
Agri-food Products, 1970-2006(as a percent of
total agri-food exports)
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Beef Consumption and the National Cattle
Herd, 1960-2005
Source Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
Livestock Market Review and Statistics Canada,
Cansim II, Series label D263233.
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Mapping Packinghouse Alienation

• It would be difficult to find another
  industry where the division of labor has been so
  ingeniously and microscopically worked out. The
  animal has been surveyed and laid off like a map
  and the men have been classified in over thirty
  specialties and twenty rates of pay, Skill has
  been specialized to fit the anatomy.
• (John Commons, 1904 3-4)
• Carcass geography
• The map that was key
• to differentiating the labour the
• commodity meat it created

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Commodities

• Good or service produced by human labour and
  offered for sale on the market
• Marx
• Raw materials (primary products) used by industry
  and traded globally on specialist commodities
  markets
• Generally undifferentiated
• no brand no logo!
• soft commodities are perishable
• coffee, soybeans, or pork bellies

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Traditional Differentiation of Commodity Beef

• Price, delivery and terms of sale
• Beef quality (quality grade yield grade)
• Feeding regimen grain or grass-fed

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New Dimensions of Differentiation for Beef

• Natural/organic or not
• Hormone free/antibiotic free
• Brand
• Country-of-origin
• Traceability age verification
• Tested for BSE?

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Country of Origin Labeling (COOL)

• United States Farm Bill of May 2002.
• By Sept 2004, all beef, lamb, veal, pork, farmed
  fish, perishable agricultural commodities and
  peanuts sold in the U.S. must bear COOL to the
  point of retail sale.
• COOL rule U.S. meat products have to be born,
  raised and slaughtered in the U.S.
• Ostensibly an attempt to increase the
  traceability of the covered commodities.
• Canadian view NTB not food safety measure

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Country of Origin Labeling

• Does not apply to poultry
• Only applies to supermarkets with sales of
  gt230,000 of fruits and vegetables
• (not to restaurants, specialty butchers)
• processed food items are exempt.
• E.g. cooked, cured, smoked, restructured meats or
  ground meats with any added ingredients

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Country of Origin Labeling

• Why is the Canadian industry opposed?
• Not that American consumers will reject a
  Canadian meat product
• But that retailers will avoid carrying anything
  but American products when COOL is required
• Increased segregation and record-keeping costs
• U.S. products too have to be traceable to prove
  domestic content

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Canadian Cattle Identification Program

• Enforcement began on July 1, 2002
• RFID tags mandatory by Sept 1, 2006
• electronically readable
• (U.S. NAIS is voluntary)
• Transponders must be fastened to the ear prior to
  leaving the farm of origin.
• Identification number keyed to national
  database, maintained to the point of export or
  carcass inspection where the animal is either
  approved for consumption of condemned.

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Age Verification

• Birth date or birth date range (first to last
  calf in herd) associated with each RFID
• Benefits of Age Verification
• International trading partners proposing age
  verification information as a pre-requisite for
  export
• Age verification supports future initiatives such
  as Full Animal Movement Tracking and Premise
  Identification

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Traceability

• 6 billion people, 4.5 billion mammalian
  livestock, 17 billion poultry
• Potential food contamination (dioxin), zoonoses
  (BSE) animal disease (aftosa)
• Ability to trace animals foodstuff back to
  source
• Ability to track forwards from feed to animal to
  foodstuff
• .rapidly, accurately and credibly

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Traceability

• Risk management
• Food safety or herd health problems
• Supply chain management
• Improved logistics production efficiency
• Attribute to differentiate food product
• Consumers will demand quality assurance
• Traceability itself becomes the quality attribute
  

Jill Hobbs http//pdic.tamu.edu/farmpolicy/hobbs.
pdf
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Traceabilty

• 2 elements to differentiation
• food which is traceable and food which is not
• Traceable to establish different attributes
• Certified disease free
• Certified organic
• Certified as to country of origin

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Traceability is Complex!

• Herds of multiple animals multiple species
• Changing location of animals over time in
  different types of holdings
• farm
• packinghouse
• livestock market
• veterinary clinics quarantine centres
• agricultural show
• vehicles
• Geographical Information System (GIS)

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BSE, Quality Assurance Science-based policy
Former Prime Minister Jean Chretien enjoys an
Alberta steak, May 23, 2003

• You would have to eat 10 billion meals of
  brains, spinal cords, ganglia, eyeballs and
  tonsils.

Former Agriculture Minister John Gummer and his
daughter eat burgers for the British paparazzi.
(May 1990)
Former Premier Ralph Klein (Alberta)
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Conclusions

• Brand image of beef tarnished
• Response Differentiation
• Who will be first to seize these opportunities?
• Fully integrated, highly concentrated, capital
  intensive agri-businesses
• Who will be left out?
• Smallest producers may be forced out of cow-calf
  ops.
• Livestock revolution pastoralists of the
  developing countries?

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• Packinghouse Alchemy From Commodity Cattle to
  Quality Assured Beef Ian MacLachlan and Ivan
  Townshend, Department of Geography, The
  University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB T1K 3M4.
  E-mail maclachlan_at_uleth.ca.
•  
• Growing continental integration of livestock and
  meat markets came to an abrupt end on May 20,
  2003 when the discovery of a single case of BSE
  in Canada led to a U.S. embargo on Canadian
  cattle and beef products. More than ten years
  after NAFTA had committed North Americans to a
  free trade environment, strong protectionist
  sentiments emerged in the name of animal health
  and food safety. A new regulatory regime is on
  agenda of U.S. producer groups based on
  innovative data capture, storage, and audit
  technologies. Carcass traceability from the
  retail tray-pack back to the farm-of-birth, age
  verification of livestock at time of slaughter,
  and country-of-origin labeling requirements are
  on the verge of transforming the continental
  cattle trade. By giving every saleable unit of
  beef a unique identity, the notion of meat as an
  amorphous agricultural commodity is giving way to
  a highly differentiated food product. Handled and
  marketed as a finished product, beef is
  becoming differentiated along multiple dimensions
  (name of the cut, age of animal, country or
  region of origin, carcass grade, and whether it
  meets organic or natural product standards).
  These new quality standards may be instrumental
  in the ongoing transformation in the regional
  distribution of cattle production and livestock
  processing in North America with the potential
  for even further consolidation of livestock
  production in the hands of large scale
  agro-industrial producers.