Without a doubt, livestock auctions play a vital role in our industry. But the dissidents don t stop there. Their insistence that cattle be marketed via traditional methods leads them to strongly oppose many of the new marketing arrangements developed to ensure more coordination among industry segments. A third plank in the dissident platform is vehement opposition to beef or cattle imports. This isolationist stance just doesn t compute when one examines charts of imports, which fluctuate relative to our domestic cattle cycle, and charts of exports, which show a steadily increasing amount of cattle and beef shipped to other countries.
World trade is a two-way street.
We cannot cut off imports and expect to have foreign markets open to us. There can be no denying that any new dollars flowing into the beef industry can come from only one source, namely the consumer. They would have us abandon the promotion and research funded by the checkoff. They would outlaw new marketing arrangements providing our constituency, consumers, with more consistent, convenient beef products. And they would deny us access to the many foreign customers who are developing a preference for our beef.