December 26, 2003
US Chicken, Pork Producers Worry About Mad Cow Consequence
American chicken and pork producers dismissed speculation that the mad cow case could boost their incomes. Instead, they fear that consumers' concern on food safety will encompass all meat products.
"This is not good for chicken," said Bill Roenigk, an official with the National Chicken Council. "Consumers should be and are concerned about their food supply. Anything that jeopardizes consumer confidence in the food supply is not good for us."
The concern now also draws to the Americans' confidence in the safety of the overall meat supply.
"It's just anybody's guess," said Jon Caspers, president of the National Pork Producers Council and a hog farmer in Swaledale, Iowa. "Markets don't deal with these things very often. It is hard to predict."
The mad cow scare hit just as chicken and pork producers had seen prices improve in August and September, in tandem with higher beef prices attributed to the popularity of high-protein diets like the Atkins diet.
It was "sort of like the water in the harbor lifting all the boats," Roenigk said.
Now, concerns about food safety could have a negative effect for all producers, said Mike Ovesen, executive director of the Kentucky Pork Producers.
"It's not even going to help the apple industry," he said. "Although, I'm sure everything is contained and everything is going to be fine. I still think we've got the safest food supply in the world."
One industry did expect a boom - organic beef, which comes from animals fed only milk, grasses and grains from birth to slaughter.
Mad cow disease is believed to be spread through cattle feed containing protein or bone meal from infected cows or sheep. Although the government banned feeding cattle such products in 1997, organic food advocates say the law has loopholes and is poorly enforced.
Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association believed there would be a huge increase in the demand for organic beef, which currently accounts for no more than 1% of U.S. beef sales.
Organic beef carries a premium price; organic ground beef, for example, is priced six to eight times higher than what supermarkets charge for regular ground beef.
The Center for Consumer Freedom, a coalition that includes mainstream restaurants and food producers, says "radical social activists" are using the mad cow news to create panic over the food supply.
"These activists are clearly hoping to drive U.S. shoppers away from the grocery meat counter and toward more expensive organic and so-called 'natural' options," said David Martosko, director of research for the group.
