Travis Toews was elected president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association at the national lobby group’s annual meeting in late March. He and his wife and his parents run Melbern Holdings, a ranching operation in Beaverlodge, Alberta. The family runs 700 cows and 1,000 yearlings and backgrounds around 1,200 head a year. Travis has been on the CCA board since 2005 and was elected vice-president last year after cattle dealer Tony Saretsky resigned the position. He headed up the CCA’s foreign trade committee and worked on committees dealing with agriculture policy and regulation, value creation and competitiveness.
Canadian Cattlemen caught up with him last month shortly after he was elected.
Q. Has the CCA developed a strategy for 2010 and beyond?
A. An annual meeting creates an opportunity to review our policies on the various issues that the industry is facing and I think collectively our policies do form a strategy for moving forward. At times I think folks have probably misinterpreted what our strategy may be. To sum it up, we really believe that we have a responsibility to ensure that we have the most competitive market access for our producers, to ensure the most competitive business and regulatory environment in this country. And then let the private entrepreneurs of this industry capture all the opportunities available to them.
I hear government opinions occasionally that the industry doesn’t have a plan and that we should be, in a sense, centrally planning the events and structures and formats of the industry. My view is that there’s not one of us who is smart enough to do that. The market will do that if we ensure that the competitive variables in terms of market access and regulatory environment are right.
Entrepreneurs will follow market directions and move this industry forward. That might look different in different regions and different sectors. But I think that is the strategy that I would like to see preserved as we go forward.
That we continue to be a market-driven industry and that we defend those free market principles.
Q. If there was one thing you could accomplish in your term as president what would that be?
A. I would measure success by moving forward on the market access file to ensure that Canadian producers have competitive market access in all the regions of the world that are significant importers of beef. And we’ve got some work to do there. That would include our COOL challenge in the U.S. Not just the legal challenge, but the related advocacy work that we’ve been doing there.
And I wouldn’t leave it just at market access. Combined with that I would also measure success as being able to meaningfully deal with the various regulatory issues that we face in this country domestically that are impeding the growth of our industry.
Q. Do you think the recent announcement of money for packers to deal with specified risk material (SRM) is part of the solution for the regulatory difficulties?
A. It buys us a little time. We’re supportive of that budget announcement and in fact we pressed the federal government to help with the cost of SRM disposal while we get to a more permanent solution. The ideal solution that we see is regulatory harmonization with the U.S. But we know that that may be some time off.
I think we are seeing more interest in the packing industry and seeing it adopting technology that could to some degree reduce the cost of handling that SRM. The very short-term solution is to deal with the cost of disposal which this budget goes some distance to doing. The intermediate-term solution is seeing these packers and renderers introduce technologies where they can reduce the cost of handling them at least.
I think the ultimate long-term solution is regulatory harmonization with the U.S.
Q. Which is always difficult?
A. It really is. The reality is we have market access negotiations in play right now and even though the information we are privy to would show that the short list in terms of SRMs does not measurably increase eradication time of BSE, we know that to have that discussion in the middle of market access negotiations is difficult.
Q. Do you see any progress in market access negotiations now that Ottawa has a new federal trade secretariat?
A. We are optimistic. The reality is they’ve only been up and running for a short period of time. They’ve been getting some personnel in place. But they’ve been active on a number of files. Maybe not as much on the beef file and some others, but they’ve been getting at it.
We personally would like to see their mandate expanded to where they would be responsible for more of the market access negotiations that are on the go today.
Q. What does the CCA see then as the benefit to merging the Canada Beef Export Federation and the Beef Information Centre if market access is so crucial?
A. Our provincial members have really asked the question, are there efficiencies and effectiveness to be gained by looking at a merger of the two organizations. There were a couple of studies conducted, both of which showed benefits to merging. CCA has really just been the facilitator of the process.
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