CALF_News_February_March_2021

19 CALF News • February | March 2021 • www.calfnews.net beef exporting nation that doesn’t have a traceability system.” Grund adds that if a catastrophic event were to occur, there is no quick, simple way to halt the spread of disease, wreck- ing opportunities to export globally. “Our value as a voluntary traceability system is that we can be proactive and build a contact-tracing system that allows us to help identify and potentially stop the spread of disease before it spreads like wildfire.” Kyler Langvardt, U.S. CattleTrace pro- gram manager, says the COVID-19 pan- demic has thrown a wrench in informing operators about the program. Volunteers have traditionally informed producers about this program at cattle industry meetings and events. “We plan to use a variety of communications, such as social media, to reach folks, and we hope to see producers in person when we’re able to do that safely.” PACKER-PRODUCER DIVIDE Continued from page 15 A fan of new technology, Langvardt says this relatively new tool for the cattle industry has some kinks to be worked out. However, the innovative technol- ogy, rapid read rates and non-disruption of current practices for producers are promising. That was the system Monfort adopted when its plant became unionized in the early 1960s. They fell in line with the major packing companies, which Kenny thought was just fine. In a 1969 newsletter to employees, Kenny spelled it out. “It seems so simple and maybe a little corny,” he wrote. “Good pay for good work. Everyone profits. Management is not interested in cheating a little on the pay, not interested in being ‘cute,’ not interested in contracts way under the national rate and not interested in the ‘hard line.’ Our employ- ees are not interested in a slow down or in inferior work. This is a combination that has worked to everyone’s benefit.” IBP took a different line. It had strikes that stopped operations for 28 months over a period of 13 years, with one particularly nasty strike causing one death, major injuries and destruction. By contrast, Monfort had one fairly calm, 56-day strike over wages in 1970. But in 1979, labor costs for the Monfort Greeley plant were about $6 to $7 million higher than those in IBP plants. Kenny put his foot down during negotiations for a new contract in 1980. It might have signaled the beginning of the end. The company would close the plant later that year. It took a toll on Kenny’s outlook. “That closing and the effects of it on our community in general, and our employees in particular, are marked down in my book as my greatest failure to date,” he would later write. “I had a number of failures in personal relation- ships, some political failures and those everyday types of goof-ups …But all of those type things pale in comparison to the problems that I could not solve involving our business and our plant in Greeley.” In 1982, the company re-opened the Greeley plant, but without a union and at wage rates about half of what they had been before. The union filed a complaint that overturned a union election and get- ting compensation for its members. While competing with the massive IBP was challenging, it became impos- sible when companies with really deep pockets got involved. IBP sold out to Occidental Petroleum while the next largest packer, EXCEL, was purchased by Cargill, which went on to buy the Spencer Beef Division of Land O’Lakes. Though Monfort fought the sale, its efforts failed. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, the company ended up selling its own business to Conagra in 1987. A Different Approach The Monforts brought a cowboy and cattle feeder attitude to the beef packing industry. They honored handshakes and offered fair wages. They paid immediately for fat cattle, in good markets and bad, with checks sellers knew would be good. Furthermore, as Kenny had told a House Agriculture Subcommittee in 1966, thanks to the Monforts “other packers have been forced to modernize and improve both their facilities and their buying techniques.” He believed that feeders or groups of feeders should also have the “freedom to improve their economic position by further processing their production.” Just wanting a better market for their cattle, Warren and Kenny Monfort couldn’t have foreseen the eventual consequences of getting into the packing business. They made their mark, though, and probably took the industry in direc- tions it might not have otherwise gone. Walt Barnhart is the author of Kenny’s Shoes: A Walk Through the Storied Life of the Remarkable Kenneth W. Monfort. He can be reached at carnivorecomm@msn. com.  The folks at Beef Northwest in Oregon have used high-tech, easy-to-read UHF tags for several years. “Our goal is to build a robust, nationally significant, voluntary disease traceabil- ity system in the cattle industry,” Grund reports.“It would include breeders, feed- yards, tags in ears and the ability to contact trace over two-thirds of the industry.” Continued on page 23 