Word: cowed
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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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...
...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...
...acres of pens with 7,000 head of cattle, feedlot owner Norm Haaland is concerned but philosophical. From his second-story vantage point at TBone Feeders in Shepherd, Mont., he watches corn trucks rumble in to dump loads of feed. He is worried about the fallout from the mad-cow crisis, but his cattlemen customers are more concerned about the recent U.S. decision to allow imports of boxed beef from Canada as long as it comes from cattle younger than 30 months. "The big packers are making a killing up there, buying Canadian cattle from the feeders at hardship prices...
...doing much of what is now required. Industry leaders like Eric Davis of the Cattlemen's Association say they support the USDA moves. "We may not like what they tell us, but we'll follow the facts and go where we need to go," says Davis, who runs a cow-calf and feedlot operation in Bruneau, Idaho...
...question is whether the changes will satisfy foreign buyers. The Organization for Competitive Markets, based in Lincoln, Neb., represents farmers and ranchers and believes the USDA proposals will not be enough to convince foreign buyers that the meat supply is free of mad cow. The Japanese, who paid dearly in lost sales and public confidence when they did not get tough on BSE until after a sick cow turned up in 2001, seem to be in no hurry to restart U.S. imports. Tokyo rebuffed an agricultural delegation from the U.S. last week and reportedly wants Washington to require mad-cow...