Everyone from the auctioneer to cattle buyers to ranchers were buzzing with three letters on their lips at the Oct. 31 cattle sale at the Innisfail Auction Mart – JBS.
That morning was the first moment many of them had heard the news that JBS USA, the company now operating the XL Foods plant at the centre of the largest beef recall in Canadian history, would be bidding at the Wednesday auction.
“Now they're back online I think it's gonna be back to business as usual,” said commercial rancher Neil Buckland, who said he decided to bring his cows in after hearing the Brooks plant in question would be resuming operations. “That makes more competition.”
While prices have only risen to about 68-70 cents a pound for slaughtered cattle, up from about 62 cents a pound, there was bound to be a drop in the price at this time of year due to the usual influx of fall cattle.
“Really the price is pretty good,” Buckland said. “The price is still down a little from where it was.”
Tom Shuckburgh, a feeder cattle order buyer, said he's surprised at how quickly the industry is rebounding from the E.coli scare.
“The volume has been picking up steadily in the past couple weeks,” he said. “There was nothing, and then all of a sudden we're rolling like it never shut down.”
Shuckburgh said he expected the recovery to take longer, and noted just how quickly JBS USA, a subsidiary of the Brazilian based JBS S.A., the world's largest player in the beef sector, was able to move in.
“I actually thought things would take a couple months to get going,” he said. “Monday we heard that they were starting and Wednesday they're buying already.”
Innisfail Auction Mart Co-owner Jack Daines described the atmosphere as nothing short of “total excitement.”
The family-run business got a heads-up from JBS recently to make sure they would have cattle at the ready.
“We got word of it two weeks ago,” he said, noting they had 3,000 feeder cattle by Monday. “It not only helps the farmers, it helps the man that's selling balers, it helps the man that's selling tractors.”
The benefits of a healthy beef industry translate far beyond farming, he said.
“It helps grocers,” he said. “If the farmer's got money he'll spend'er.”
Central Alberta Co-op Ltd. sourced meat from Cargill in a temporary arrangement, after gutting their shelves of fresh meat products from XL Foods.
“Things were pretty much normal within a week following the recall,” said Central Alberta Co-op General Manager Mike Clement. “The consumer wouldn't have noticed any price difference.”
Meat removed from the store was sent back to XL Foods.
