Beef promotion groups stew over future
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
by BETTER FARMING STAFF
The planned amalgamation of producer funded beef promotion groups is in doubt. Ontario Cattlemen’s Association president Curtis Royal confirms representatives from the provincial producer organizations that fund as much as 90 per cent of the Canada Beef Export Federation’s efforts have withdrawn funding and resigned. “We are kind of in never-never land,” says export federation chair Gib Drury, a Quebec cow-calf operator. There is funding to operate until June. “We have two months to straighten out the mess.”
Drury says CBEF was on track to form a single beef promotion organization along with the Beef Information Centre, and Canadian Beef Cattle Research, Market Development and Promotion Agency. A special meeting was held in Toronto on Feb. 17 to consider a formal proposal. The export federation board agreed with the proposed amalgamation, Drury stresses. There is a dispute over the issue of governance of the consolidated organization.
“The proposal on the table was an appointment process and we want an election process through membership,” Drury explains. “We asked if the proposal on the table could be amended. We adjourned the meeting . . . after that all hell broke loose,” he says. Board members resigned, and XL Foods and Cargill, Canada’s largest packers, quit their memberships. In a Feb. 18 CBEF press release Drury says “the meeting was adjourned to avoid a vote to simply defeat the (amalgamation) proposal.”
Royal says discussion on amalgamation at the Toronto meeting “was just nicely into the debate” when a motion was made to adjourn the meeting. “There have been a number of delay tactics by the CBEF group,” Royal says.
The Canada Beef Working Group Termination Report, dated Feb. 24, said there was no indication when CBEF would hold another special meeting to consider the amalgamation proposal and time was running out on the deadline for CBEF directors to approve a letter of intent signed by its representatives.
“We will continue all of our programs,” Drury says. Offices will stay open and employees will continue working.
Drury said Thursday he didn’t know what happens next. The Canada Beef Working Group, charged with the amalgamation, disbanded. “It makes it very hard to negotiate anything when there is nobody on the other side of the table,” Drury says.
A Working Group termination report, dated Feb. 24, says the adjournment of the special meeting, the resignation of the CBEF directors who sat on the Working Group and the withdrawal of the packer representatives makes it impossible for the terms of the planned amalgamation to be met.
On Friday Royal predicted there will be more information after the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association meeting in mid-March.
An export federation report released at the annual Ontario Cattlemen’s Association convention last week, said “the federation was directly responsible for $143 million in Canadian beef and veal exports in 2009. . . . . Every dollar invested in the Canada beef Export Federation resulted in over $19 in beef export sales last year.”
The collapse of the amalgamation was never raised during the public part of OCA annual convention last week. The advisory council was updated at a closed door breakfast meeting on Thursday, Royal says.
Royal was unable to say how much the Ontario Cattlemen’s Association pays to fund CBEF activities but describes it as “a significant contributor.”“When you have two organizations and you try to amalgamate them into one you do get differences. It is always a challenge.”
Meantime, Drury plans to be “In Taiwan and Korea drumming up sales for Canadian beef for the next two weeks.” BF