CCA Dealing With Growing Cattle Inventory

Apr 21, 2020

Cargill has decided to temporarily idle it's High River, Alberta processing plant.

The facility handles about 20,000 animals a week

Dennis Laycraft, the Executive Vice President of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association (CCA), says they're working on how to deal with the growing inventory, noting it will be impacted by the duration of the closure.

"We're looking at structuring an industry/government committee similar to what we did with BSE that will be trying to look at what is a realistic weekly, monthly, and quarterly processing capacity or harvesting capacity. Then that determines how many animals would be put on a maintenance ration."

He notes the industry is looking at slowing down feeder cattle placements, moving heifers back into the herd and reducing the number of cattle entering into the feeder system.

They'll also look at other federal or provincial processing facilities to see where they can increase capacity.

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