Quebec’s cattle producers have voted their approval of an extra checkoff to support the producer-owned Levinoff-Colbex beef packing plant, according to the farm newspaper La terre de chez nous.
During their annual general assembly Thursday in Quebec City, a majority of the province’s cattle producers backed a resolution favouring a $30 million top-up for the plant, the newspaper reported on its web site Friday.
That level of support for the plant, which processes cull cows and dairy cattle at St. Cyrille-de-Wendover, would likely involve a contribution equal to about $53.86 per marketed animal, the newspaper said.
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The newspaper had reported in its March 20 edition that producers at information meetings favoured a checkoff on cull cattle marketed through the plant, rather than a previous proposal to deduct $5.12 per head from cattle producers’ stabilization insurance payments.
The proposal calls for a checkoff to be collected over five years, starting in July, to help pay down the plant’s debt, which La terre reported at $47 million.
Quebec’s dairy producers’ federation will vote on a similar resolution April 9-10 at their own annual general assembly, also in Quebec City. It’s proposed by their federations and by l’Union des producteurs agricoles (UPA) that the dairy producers’ contribution take the form of an extra 19-cent-per-hectolitre checkoff on milk.
A financial analysis of the Colbex facility led its operators to conclude cattle producers will need to help cover the plant’s losses and restore it to a maneuverable margin against multinational competitors in the beef market, the cattle producers’ federation said recently.
Quebec’s cattle producers pledged $50 million to buy 80 per cent control of the packer in early 2006, funded in part by way of a checkoff of $20 per cull animal. They later bought the stake belonging to the Cola brothers, who had co-owned the plant with the Dube family, for $12.5 million.
The facility, Eastern Canada’s largest cull-cattle slaughter plant, had been the focus of a blockade by cattle producers in 2004, who after making a deal for control of the plant began paying 42 per cents per pound for cattle delivered there. La terre said the plant had made a $6 million profit in 2006 but posted a $1.5 million loss in 2007.
Cull cattle prices had spiraled downward after the U.S. shut its border to older Canadian cattle following the discovery of Canada’s first BSE-positive cow in 2003. The U.S. re-opened its border to Canadian cattle over 30 months of age in November 2007.
