Montana Meat Processors Association
Newsletters
Beef Council Report by Wes Plummer
Happy New Year from the Montana Beef Council. Our fall board meeting was held in September and I accepted a nomination as Vice-President. With this I'll serve a few more years on the board. Thanks for intrusting this in me. Any questions fee free to call if I don't know the answer, I will get ti for you. Alsong with this we also have Tammy Bridges in Collections and COmpliance; she is doing all deposits and documentation of the collection system. All systems seem to be working extremely well. As a lot of you know Tammy Bridges wored in the office of Meat & Po8ltry Inspection Bureau, a brance of the Department of Livestock. Montana Beef Council leases spacew from the Department of Livestock so Tammy is reight there. She is truly doing a great job; if you get a chance tell her thanks.
November 2-4, I representated the Montana Beef Council in Tucson for a Strategic Planning Conference with the United States Meat Export Federation. With being a small Meat Plant owner myself like a lot of you, I realized just how hard it is to work alongside of big industry. With this I went to general session called Exports & you Bottom Line, by Bill Rupp, President, and Beef Division for JBS. He told of how valuable exports where and that in 2003 value per head extra was $136.43 and in 2011 the value went to $204.00 per head just for the drops as he called them. This came to $84.00 per hide, $63.00 per offal set and $57.00 for the rednering off each beef being exported. That tells that right out of the gate up her in MOntana the producers and processors are out are $245.00 per head based on a 775# carcass. with this being said, that is why we all have to find out own little niche market like Montana Grown, all Natural, free range or whatever. John Bellinger from Agri-West International told of the importance to seel what cusotmers want, you must trust your cusetomers and get your custeomers to trust you. So listen to the consumers.
Montana's own Max Baucus was awarded the Mike Mansfield Award for being a strong meat industry advocate. It really is a tru honor for Max. After listening ot a lot of pros and cons about traceability we passed a resolution encouraging this. It's not mandatory, producers that don't want, don't have to, it all comes back to finding your own niche market. On the other hand if you plan on exporting, China, Japan, Korea and others it boils down t give customers what they want. I do not know a thing about bloggin or tweeting, but I do know it's the new owrld way, all the young mothers in some international markets insist on scanning products with their phones or whatever device to bring up where the meat is coming from, a lot are expecting photo;'s and a story from the producer. It all comes down to that the USMEF has done a wonderful job and has put a lot of extra money in our producers pockets. With US dollar being down right now our exports are on fire, reaching more heights all the time. With the three FTA's Korea, Panama and Columbia and more access coming all the tiem. The Meat Exports look good
Thanks for letting me serve