Over the past week, North American beef processing capacity has been reduced at a number of facilities due to challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
For Canada, this includes the Cargill processing facility in High River, Alberta, which temporarily reduced shifts. This facility represents 36 per cent of total Canadian processing capacity. Other plants within Canada have also marginally reduced packing capacity to be able to implement COVID-19 protocols such as spacing of workers within the plant.
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the CCA submitted a set of recommendations to the Federal Government including changes to the Business Risk Management (BRM) programs. Additionally, within the submission was the recommendation to re-build the BSE era set-aside framework to be implemented should a critical situation, such as a significant reduction in packing capacity, arise.
“We learned many lessons during the hard years of BSE, and it is time to implement the policies that previously helped us weather the storm,” said CCA President Bob Lowe.
The objective of a set-aside program is to delay the marketing of cattle when processing capacity isn’t available. The program would be designed to encourage farmers to hold cattle on maintenance rations. This would allow cattle marketings to stretch out over a longer period of time and be managed by existing packing capacity, until slaughter capacity can be regained. The program was originally jointly developed between governments and the Canadian beef industry during the BSE era.
“We also must look at and support all actions that can assist in our current situation," added Lowe. "This could include increases in processing capacity at provincial packing plants and holding back cows so that we can focus slaughter on fed cattle - everything is on the table."
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