Betty Jo Gigot, Editor and Publisher

Wow, what a heart-stopping couple of weeks this has been. The debacle at Westland/Hallmark Meat Packing Co., in Chino, Calif., brought out all of the big guns, ready to write new laws and revamp the entire industry. As it looks to me, there was enough fault to go around. Take a dairy cow that probably should not have been brought to the facility, a company whose employees did not understand or had not been trained in how to move such an animal, and a group that did certainly did not care about the animals or they would have reported the offences the next day, not many weeks later – and we are on the defensive again. The moral of that story is train your people to do it right.

That was still raging when the other shoe dropped. For years I have listened to beef industry marketing gurus say, “When consumers get disposable funds, they will want to eat beef.” The reasoning goes that if consumers have a choice and the means, they will buy beef over chicken and pork. The theory should also play out in third-world countries as they become more affluent.

As most of you know, I have a degree in opera (applied music) and drama, so it has come as a real economic revelation to me in the past few months that, as those countries have gained a middle class, they don’t just want to eat beef. They want everything else that goes with our standard of living like gas and steel and concrete, to the point that, in some cases, the demand overruns the supply. Right now you have to schedule far ahead of time for a load of concrete in Amarillo, Texas, because the Chinese market has monopolized one of the ingredients as they prepare to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Now we are looking at a totally different ballgame with the recent announcements about JBS’s intent to purchase U.S. Premium Beef LLC and National Beef Packing Company as well as Smithfield Foods’ beef processing and cattle-feeding operations. One of the smart men in the industry told me, “I think this will affect the U.S. consumer more than it will the cowboys because it puts beef into a different position in the international market.” Wouldn’t it be wild if we had to vie for supply?

Industry reaction about the buyout has run the gamut. The processing segment of the industry has seen new, large players enter and leave the market quickly in the past few years, and in spite of what some think, profits are difficult to come by with any regularity – the old, “If it’s such a moneymaker, why are we down to three players?” question.

Some activist groups might be confused about the fact that they could be partly responsible for part of this sale with the threat of a ban on packer-owned cattle and the possible elimination of branded products. Their confusion is that they are ADAMENTLY against allowing the JBS sale to go through. But if they only harvest grass and would not be caught producing beef, why should they care who owns what down the line?

So as we settle in to see who will be on the Democratic ticket, and if there really will be a farm bill, and if there is not a farm bill, do any of us have cattle in our possession that will not fit into the old COOL guidelines, and where the fuel prices are headed etc. etc. etc., let’s be happy for the U.S. Premium founders who worked so hard and will hopefully come out on the good side of a good idea. The rest will work itself out. It always does.