CCA welcomes funding to support strengthening Canada’s meat industry

Calgary, AB – The Canadian Cattlemen’s Association (CCA) welcomes news of $1 million in AgriMarketing support for Canada’s meat industry, as announced this morning by Member of Parliament Chris Bittle.

 

The funding, allocated to the Canadian Meat Council (CMC), will enable the CMC, CCA and the Canadian Pork Council (CPC) to undertake collaborative and targeted activities to strengthen and pave the way for further diversification of markets for Canadian beef and pork products. Such activities will include strengthening international trade relationships with foreign industry partners, providing expertise for global trade missions, and inspection visits by international officials to Canadian processing facilities to demonstrate food safety requirements.

 

The CCA thanks the Government of Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau for the funding from the Canadian Agricultural Partnership’s AgriMarketing program. The ability to sell beef and beef by-products into the markets willing to pay the most for them is crucial to maximizing the value of each animal produced in Canada.

 

In 2018, Canada’s beef industry exported $2.75 billion (398,580 tonnes) of beef, representing 38 per cent of domestic slaughter. This is a new record high in beef export value. Canada exported 597,500 tonnes of beef and cattle valued at $3.7 billion in 2018, representing 44 per cent of beef production (including live slaughter cattle exported).

 

The Canadian beef industry represents the second largest single source of farm cash receipts, with cash receipts from cattle and calves totaling $9.4 billion annually over the last five years (2014-18 average), representing 16 per cent of total farm cash receipts, contributing $18 billion to GDP annually, and generating an estimated 228,000 jobs in Canada, with every job in the sector yielding another 3.56 jobs elsewhere in the economy.

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.