Word: feedlots
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Meanwhile, in the trading pits of the 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...
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...
Less fortunate are the 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...
Looking out over 45 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...
These animals grazed in pasture and never set hoof in a feedlot. Typically produced by small farms and snapped up by upscale restaurants, this meat is hard to find in the grocery store...