Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Hello and welcome to our new BC Association of Cattle Feeders "blog". We hope you will feel free to send your comments about our industry, where it is going and how we can work together to make it survive and, indeed, grow!

The feeding sector in British Columbia is in crisis. We are feeding 25% of the number of cattle we were feeding even 5 years ago. The Alberta government subsidy program has greatly hurt our ability to be competitive, but with a very small amount of help from our government to put us on a level playing field with the subsidies that Alberta offers to their industry.

Our provincial minister of agriculture has made it exceedingly clear to us that there will be no financial support from them and that we need to develop other strategies for survival.

Country of Origin Labelling in the US has dried up many markets for us south of the border wheree we sent most of our cattle for slaughter and while there is a challenge to COOL at the WTO, it will be years before it goes through all of the processes to alter the regulation.

What do you think? Do you have any ideas for our industry? Please give us your ideas and thoughts.