Ranchers Upset with Federal Government

[jdobbin]

I heard a little of this on the radio today. Boy, were there some hot headed ranchers over this.

http://calsun.canoe.ca/Business/2007/08/21/4434091-sun.html

Hundreds of staff have been laid off at a meat processing plant on the city's northeast outskirts that has filed for bankruptcy.

Cor Van Raay, a southern Alberta feedlot operator who lost millions due to the closure of Rancher's Beef, yesterday said the slaughterhouse got off to a bad financial start and never recovered.

Loan guarantees promised by the federal government fell short about $10 million because of changes to the funding formula, he said, adding the missing millions had to be taken out of the plant's operating budget to complete construction.

"We would never have built this plant if the government did what they did (sooner)," he said.

The company, a partnership of about 50 ranchers, farmers and feedlot owners from Alberta and B.C., had no choice but to file for bankruptcy, Van Raay said.

You'd figure that with all the millions the government has been tossing out this summer that they'd have found a way to help these ranchers. Oh well, who else are they going to vote for in Alberta?

[old_bold&cold]

I can say though that the federal government should not be the ones supporting the meat packers etc. of Alberta, as the meat industry there has made commitments for all the top sterlig choice meat to only be sold to the USA companies etc. They also have agreements where only certain grades are sent to the eastern provinces and Ont can only get AAA and Quebec is AA grade. The fact that Alberta and their meat packers have this type of arrangement that puts the USA above Canadian interests, tells me that the feds who should be the ones to push this issue, should make sure that these policies are not allowed to continue. Otherwise the meat industry should not get a penny from the federal government. It was my butcher who made me aware of these events when I pushed him to only get me sterling quality beef. At that time the shipments were closed to the USA, and I only got what I wanted while that was going on. Since then I have had to settle for lesser quality or pull some deals that were no all quite above board. But the rules about all this are quite widely known in the meat industry.