CCA looking to discuss foreign policy, animal health at upcoming semi-annual meeting

The Canadian Cattle Association (CCA) will be one of the organizations helping to host the Canadian Beef Industry Conference, this year taking place in Saskatoon.

Ryder Lee, the general manager for the CCA, says it's good to be in the province.

"It's exciting from a guy from Saskatchewan's point of view, we're bringing our summer meeting to Saskatoon, it kind of rotates across the country and it's Saskatchewan's turn. So looking forward to it, it's always a nice part of the year to be in Saskatoon."

Lee says that a number of meetings will be a part of the conference, including the CCA's own semi-annual meeting.

"There's a lot of industry meetings that they kind of decided to shove together into one week so that it makes for a busy week. We've got CCA's own semi-annual meeting, there's the national check-off agencies meeting, and the Canadian Cattle Young Leaders Program does their selections. There's just quite a few things happen. Aside from those meetings, there's the conference itself that happens. So lots of good speakers and entertainment there to fill your time through the week."

There's something there for whatever aspect of agriculture people want to talk about, according to Lee.

"I think there's something there for everyone. I spend a lot of my time in CCA committee meetings. Those range from all the topics that we cover from, you know, animal health, foreign trade environment, food policy, and domestic policy." 

"It really is all over the board and then some of those topics, I think interest people, and some of them maybe not so much, so then you can head over to the conference itself and then you've got speakers of all kinds and really interesting type stuff there."

Lee says that while there are always problems coming up one big one will work with some foreign trade policy.

"The big one that's coming at us in 2026, they're going to review the Canada, US, Mexico Free Trade Agreement. So that'll of course be a big discussion at our foreign trade meeting. You know, there are some things that we'd like to get done around trade and getting past rules that relate to BSE, so that will be one of the things at our animal health meeting."