Word: beef
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...short, America's $4.3 billion beef-export business is pretty much dead meat, at least for now. "We still haven't felt the full shock of this because of the holidays," says James Robb, director of the Livestock Marketing Information Center in Lakewood, Colo. Don Roose, president of U.S. Commodities Inc., a grain-and-livestock investment firm in West Des Moines, Iowa, predicts the damage will be long-term: "We've already got Taiwan saying they're going to ban U.S. beef for seven years...
...complex chain that starts at the bottom rung with the cantankerous collection of cow-calf ranchers, who sell to feedlot operators, who in turn sell to giant corporate packers like Cargill Meat Sector. After several tough years, profits suddenly exploded this fall as the wholesale price of beef soared to a record high of $120 per 100 lbs.--a 50% increase in one year...
...cattle--is at a seven-year low. Short supply had run headlong into the popularity of high-protein diets like Atkins, which promote lots of meat on your plate. And then came Washington's decision last summer to stop importing live Canadian cattle, which accounted for 7% of U.S. beef consumption. Delighted cattlemen from Texas to Montana rushed to fill the void as prices went through the roof. Choice cuts became particularly pricey, in part because feedlots sent cattle to packers sooner than usual in order to meet demand. And skinnier cows meant fewer choice cuts for outlets ranging from...
That lone dairy cow that fell ill now puts those gains at risk. Wholesale prices have already fallen 15% owing to fears that the decimated export market--about 10% of beef sales--will lead to a glut. But even as a third herd in Washington State was quarantined last week for possible mad-cow disease, beef emporiums like McDonald's and Morton's said sales were holding...
...wait it out. The trick in this business, he notes, is timing. The 60-year-old rancher says a lot of cow-calf operators have played the market right so far. They sold this year's calf crop when prices were up and may find that the market for beef has recovered by the time they are ready to sell their herds again next fall. Out at Murphy's ranch, on the snowy prairie of southern Montana, his pregnant cows' offspring will not be ready for sale until next fall. With no way to test live animals for BSE, Murphy...