Alberta’s beef sector has been relatively fortunate, compared to poultry and swine, having experienced few incursions of rapidly spreading diseases with high rates of mortality. That said, we all remember BSE and the devastating, long-lasting impact it had on our industry.
We are a sector that relies on trade. Around 40–50 per cent of our total beef production is exported every year, with little room to absorb more production domestically. While the U.S. is certainly our largest export market, we cannot discount the importance of other international destinations for our beef products, especially with the current volatility in the U.S.
To maintain our access to these critical markets, we need to ensure that other countries have confidence in our production systems, animal health protocols, food safety standards, and product quality.
Beef producers aren’t perfect. Our biosecurity practices can be an afterthought, we sometimes don’t have the recordkeeping practices that support the level of detail required to trace animals through our fragmented value chains, and we tend to forget about the next part of the chain once our calves are sold. We face a lot of challenges with weather, rising input costs, competitiveness, consumer perceptions, and so on. But we produce some of the highest quality and safest beef worldwide, and it’s in high demand thanks to producers—and thanks to government policies that ensure we consistently meet the high standards of production that are expected by trading partners.
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