041193 Beef Prices Are Best In Years

Porterville, CA - America's rekindled appetite for red meat is proving to be a boon for area beef producers. "Over the past 18 months, we've seen better prices for beef than we have in a long, long time," said Jim Sullins, director and farm advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension in Tulare.

"We're seeing prices that are higher than many producers can remember over their time in the industry."

Sullins said several factors have come into play to bring about the higher prices, not the least of which is the popularity of low-carbohydrate diet plans.

"We're seeing a much higher consumer demand for red meat," he said. "A lot of beef is moving to the restaurant market. People are eating more beef in general, and restaurants are really promoting beef on their menus. They're serving a lot of beef as specialty dishes. And there's a lot of promotion for beef products like Angus beef, for instance."

Moreover, he said that changes in the industry have created a better quality of beef in recent years, which also plays into the demand for beef products.

Sullins said he expects the demand and prices to remain high for the foreseeable future - even after a mad cow disease scare earlier this month caused a short-term plunge in prices.

He said prices quickly recovered when news came that the suspect animal did not have the disease, officially called bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

BSE - also known as mad cow disease, attacks an animal's nervous system. People who eat food contaminated with BSE can contract a rare disease that is nearly always fatal - variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Sullins said that American beef herds are generally well protected against the disease, which decimated the European and British beef industries with a large-scale outbreak in the 1980s.

"To begin with," he said, "we've been taking precautions against it for about 20 years now, by eliminating the use of any ruminant byproducts from cattle feed."

The addition of such byproducts from cows and sheep to feed is thought to be a primary factor in the spread of the disease, he said, and banning their use has done much to keep this country's beef supply safe.

He noted that the one case of BSE discovered in a cow in Washington state about a year ago, eventually was traced back to a Canadian herd. Even so, he said, that incident generated a more stringent testing program on cattle destined for the food chain in this country.

"We have very strict provisions for the testing of high-risk cattle," he said. "We've tested hundreds of thousands of head of cattle, and we've seen only about three incidents like this in which there's been an inconclusive result and more tests have come up negative for the disease.

"I'm not saying we'll never have BSE show up in our beef herds, but with all the steps we've taken, doing away with ruminant byproducts in the feed and all the testing, I think the chances of it turning up are really seriously reduced.

"I think the USDA is doing a good job of keeping the food safe, and in keeping consumer confidence in the safety high."

Before the BSE scare, Sullins said, beef producers were being paid a price of about $85 a hundred-weight. When the reports broke on the suspect animal, he said, prices plunged to about $75 for a couple of days, but have since recovered.

"Some people had some losses, without a doubt," he said, "but not enough to offset the gains they've made over the last year and a half of getting really good prices."

And Sullins said he expects the industry - the fourth largest agricultural moneymaker in the county in 2003, with a value of about $373 million - to continue to do well.

"Everything's off to a good start this year," he said, noting that an early rains have produced good grazing conditions in the foothills. "We've got good weather, good feed and good prices. I don't have a crystal ball, but at this point, everything is looking good."

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