Current Cattle Market Daily Headlines for Friday, July 31, 2020

Mackenzie Johnston

6 years ago

NCBA passes policy to increase cash trade levels

According to Matt Deppe, CEO of the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association, NCBA and its members unanimously passed policy that supports voluntary efforts to improve cash fed cattle trade.
The policy isn’t exactly what Iowa Cattlemen was looking for, but Deppe says it puts a tangible plan in place.
NCBA’s policy will pursue a voluntary path to achieve a robust market, however if that fails, a regularity and/or legislative solution will be explored.

Nebraska Cattlemen’s president Ken Herz says that he is satisfied with the compromise that was reached at NCBA’s summer meeting concerning cash trade.
Herz thinks that the policy creates a process to determine if the industry can achieve robust price discovery on a voluntary basis.
Nebraska Cattlemen has members on both sides of this issue, however Herz feels that this policy should appease NC’s membership.

Fifteen U.S. senators have signed on to a letter requesting an investigation by the Department of Justice into the acquisition of Mountain States Rosen (MSR) lamb processing facility by JBS. R-CALF fully supports this request.
The letter notes that the MSR facility processes approximately 350,000 lambs annually, over 6,000 per week, with an annual capacity of nearly 800,000. JBS’ acquisition of this independent processing facility would risk economic ruin for many domestic producers and would enable JBS to congest the processing pipeline.
If this acquisition goes through it will further intensify the national food security problem that Covid-19 has exposed. Significant control of U.S. lamb processing capacity would be given to a foreign company whose interests are served by imports of foreign protein into the U.S.