Proposed fed rules add operating costs, not safety

The federal government has swooped in to the livestock industry with two new rule changes that will probably be costly to producers, and most likely, do very little, or nothing, to solve either real or imagined problems.

One is from the Food and Drug Administration, greatly narrowing the list of ingredients that may be included in meat animal feed. The industry has voluntarily quit putting animal parts in feed, ever since the BSE outbreak four years ago. This codifies that and raises the ante. It will greatly increase costs for feed mill operators, both in terms of more costly ingredients and greater time needed to watch over and test the feed before it can be sold.

You cna bet that these added costs will be passed on to feed purchasers such as feedlots, who may well not be able to recoup the added cost in higher prices for the cattle, when they sell them. In commodity products, like live cattle, higher operating costs are not a consideration in the price setting mechanism. Most likely, the beef industry will wind up absorbing the added costs out of profit margins.

The second new rule is at the slaughter house, where so-called "downer" cattle will no longer be slaughtered for human consumption. This blanket prohibition cuts out lots of non-diseased, perfectly good meat that will sell not at beef prices but at offal (pet food) prices. Again, its the producer who takes it in the shorts, as he gets less dollars out of his cattle that may well be perfectly healthy, but trip walking up the slaughter ramp.

Discretion and common sense are what needed to be applied in both these situations, not federal regulations. Bad press, both the result of staged protest events that do not happen as a matter of natural course, goaded regulators into taking "see how tough I am" stands, instead of evaluating each individual case based on its merits.

This is unfair to producers, with no added safety for the meat consuming public. What a shame.