Word: cow
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...Chicago Mercantile Exchange, there were further signs of trouble. The Merc is a forward market that allows cattlemen and feedlot owners to hedge the price they will get for their products and offset some of the normal business risks. The traders provide the liquidity for that risk. But mad cow is anything but normal. James Brooks, floor-operations manager for the nation's largest cattle-futures trader, R.J. O'Brien, says the atmosphere is tense. "People are stressed out. Tempers are short. Nerves are shot," says Brooks. "We're seeing small fights break out. People are having words." The dramatic...
Before the scare, the American cattle industry had been doing well. That was true at nearly every level in the 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...
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...
...prices do fall, cattlemen like Bill Murphy in Montana expect they can 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...
...feedlot owners who paid record prices to buy cattle this fall but now will probably have to sell them to processors for far less than planned. There is not much feedlots can do to cut their costs; it takes a long time--120 to 200 days--to plump a cow for slaughter. "It's not like Ford, where you tell the workers to go home for a couple of days," says Robb. "You can't turn off cows." When the crisis erupted just before Christmas, cattle in Amarillo, Texas, were trading at $91 per 100 lbs. Three days later...