Cattle on pasture - Photo credit to CCA website

By Dori Modney

VP of Canadian Cattle Association provides information of beef prices

Jun 4, 2021 | 2:40 PM

LETHBRIDHE, AB. — If you believe beef prices at the supermarket are higher than normal right now, that’s been corroborated by the Executive Vice President of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association (CCA).

Dennis Laycraft says live cattle prices have recovered from COVID impacted shutdowns.

As well, the JBS processing plant has recovered from a day and a half shut-down due to a cyberattack and will be able to catch up on its processing capabilities. Laycraft sees minimal impact for both the consumer and the market, but if the situation had progressed much longer, there would have been greater impacts.

Right now Laycraft says the association is watching processing south of the border, which is still dealing with backlogs in their system. The sooner they can clean that up, the better the forecast is for all prices as they are largely based on the U.S market.

Fortunately, Laycroft says international demand for beef is very strong, with exports up almost 11 per cent from a year ago.

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“Our exports are up almost 11 percent over last year and that was before the slowdowns that occurred last year so you can’t really use April and May as a comparison to what’s normal from a year ago. But we’re seeing very strong demand in North America and internationally.”

Laycraft adds an example of a longer backlog was a year ago with the meatpacking shutdowns and slowdown due to COVID-19.

He says the supply chain was able to cope, but cattle were backed up and more products were imported in the short term.