August 28, 2006

Cargill's Excel limits Canadian-origin cattle purchases

Cargill's Excel Fresh Meats continues to buy Canadian-origin cattle for slaughter, but it is limiting the number to better accommodate certain marketing programmes, said Mark Klein, public spokesman for the company.

Klein's statement came in the wake of a letter circulating in the Plains cattle feeding industry that says the company will stop buying Canadian-origin cattle at all of its plants except Ft. Morgan, Colorado, because of Export Verification Programme segregation problems.

Klein said the company is not importing large numbers of slaughter cattle from Canada because it has packing plants in that country and because exchange rates make it harder to bring these cattle into the country directly for slaughter.

He said the notice about buying Canadian cattle was "related to a few small programmes, not to the overall buy".