From the Field

The calf market keeps moving up as feed grain prices keep moving down, and if you haven’t been in an auction market lately seeing how your customer’s calves are selling you should be. Now is a great time to showthat you are interested in how your bull buyers are making out and to see the trends in the marketplace. Please also make plans to show your support of the breed by attending some of the many shows and sales thisfall. The first sales in Eastern Canada have been very solid with lots of interest from across the country from established and new breeders. I think many are seeing the shortage of Charolais bulls as an opportunity to expand and capitalize on the situation.

With A & W the buzz in cattle circles, I thought I would share an article that came to me on Twitter and I retweeted it but thought it was worth putting it in the magazine. It came from the website Real Agriculture and is written by Andrew Campbell from southern Ontario.

“I’m Done with fearing food and done with A&W

There are hormones in your food! What’s worse, they are in you! Alarmed yet? You shouldn’t be, and I’ll tell you why, plus why I’m done with marketing gimmicks and done with A&W Canada.

Yes, there are hormones in your food, but are they something to fear? A&W certainly thinks so, with a new campaign promoting their beef burgers produced with “no added hormones or steroids”. It is good to know a company that says, “Being a leader isn’t always easy – but doing the right thing rarely is,” is clearly only interested in selling a few more hamburgers because of fear, rather than educating a skeptical customer.

First point: You have hormones in you right now, and whether you eat a Teen Burger or not isn’t going to change that. In fact, you may even be taking additional hormones to help keep you from getting pregnant, lessen the effects of menopause, or an incredible host of other concerns and issues. Hormones also are natural in every other living thing from a soybeanplant to a duck. It is why A&W has to promote there are not ‘added’ hormones, and can’t get away with saying hormone‐free. (Despite the fact A&W promoted a news article that got the facts wrong in the very first line).

The bun on the burger would have more estrogen than a beef patty from an animal once treated with a hormone.

My second point takes us back to the farm. In Canada and the U.S., an animal can be given a hormone (also called growth promotant) early on. Growth promtants improve the animal’s ability to process the food they eat into muscle tissue. It works via a tiny implant placed under the skin of the ear. These are slow‐release products that last about 180 days, but are used long before (at least 200 days) an animal heads to market. Why do it? With the help of hormones already circulating in all of us, these animals convert their food into muscle more efficiently — it means less crops are needed to feed that animal and therefore less manure is produced. Sarah Schultz, who blogs at Nurse Loves Farmer, pulled the stats from the Beef Cattle Research Council, and explains in her blog post on the topic, that if we didn’t use these tiny implants, it would take 12% more cattle, 11% more feed, and 10% more land to produce the same amount of beef as we are producing today. It would also mean 10% more greenhouse gases because of the increased manure. That is a huge positive environmental impact for such a tiny implant.

Third point (and this is where I really find A&W’s commitment to fear shines), Iowa State University highlighted the ‘estrogenic activity’ of a number of foods. In 500 grams of beef (or more than an entire pound) not given the added hormone, there are 5 nanograms of estrogen (ng). In an entire pound of beef given that little injection, there are 7 ng. Big difference? Not if you look at the fact your body, very naturally produced 136,000 nanograms of estrogen today, if you are a man. As a woman, you’ll produce 513,000 nanograms per day, and the mood swings that your pregnant friend seems to be feeling could be because of the almost 20 million nanograms she is producing each and every day. And we are bickering over 2? (In case you are curious, peanuts show up on the scale at 100,000 ng, white bread 300,000,ng and tofu at 113 million nanograms for the same 500g. So yes, the bun on the burger would have more estrogen than a beef patty from an animal once treated with a hormone. Also, birth control pills contain 20,000 to 50,000 ng).The Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations alsohas a report on the use, and backs up what Iowa State found– that the contribution to my system of a beef animal treated with a hormone relativeto what I produce on my own is 0.00025%. And eating at A&W, despite what they want you to believe, can’t even make that zero.

So what do we do?

Well, I’m going to start by telling A&W that their cheeky campaign, that is only meant to play on fears and certainly not inform, isn’t going to cut it for me. In fact, I’m done with A&W. It certainly doesn’t help their cause that they don’t buy 100% Canadian, even though they pride themselves on their Canadian heritage – but that discussion can wait.

I hope you choose not to stand for this either. It is too bad to go after an iconic company like A&W like this, but food companies have got to get a hold of their marketing people and shake the fear, misinformation and downright dirty tricks out.

Let’s shake some facts and common sense in, instead.”

As always, if Craig or I can be of any assistance this fall please don’t hesitate to give us a call.

Until next time,

Helge

Helge By