The Council of Beef Leaders proposed in last year’s Straw Man Beef Industry Initiative may not meet until the fall, said the man in charge of bringing all the players to the table.
“We haven’t had a meeting yet,” said Colin Jeffares, a former provincial assistant deputy minister of agriculture. “I’m not sure when a meeting will take place — certainly not in the near future.”
The council is one of the key recommendations of the straw man task force, which was struck after a leading think-tank accused the beef industry of complacency and being overly reliant on a U.S. market instead of developing an independent Canada brand and pursuing high-value export markets.
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Jeffares said there is “pretty good interest” in creating the council, but it’s been a challenge to find a date for a meeting.
However, at least one industry player has signalled its reluctance to participate. Earlier this year, Canada Beef Inc. president Rob Meijer said his organization is “nowhere near accepting of an advisory council.”
“The beef industry has enough structures and organizations and committees,” Meijer said in January. “We’re not of the view that we need yet another one.”
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Jeffares said some organizations have misinterpreted what the council is intended to do.
“Some (groups) see it as a new organization, and if you read the straw man recommendations, it’s clearly not,” he said.
Rather, the council is intended to be a forum for all players in the beef value chain to develop solutions to some of the common problems plaguing the industry, he said.
“That’s going to take some convincing for some people, (but) other people are very willing to do that,” said Jeffares, adding some organizations are overly focused on their own “little corner… of the industry.”
“People have different goals, like anything else, and I think they’ve been unable to push aside their own particular goals and look at the bigger picture.”
The canola industry is a model for what could be done, he said.
“(The canola industry) seems to be able to work very well together at all points along that value chain,” he said. “The beef industry… needs to be in that mindset.”
The sector needs to “do something different” if it hopes to overcome the challenges it is facing, he added.
“Standing still is not an option here. We can’t continue with the status quo.”
