Meat + Poultry - April 2005 - 10

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Editor:
Congratulations on your 50th Anniversary. I enjoy your magazine and
truly believe it is one of the leading
publications in the industry today. May
the future be as brilliant for you as the
past 50 years.
John G. Duyn
President
Carlton Farms
Carlton, Ore.

Editor:
I think history is showing, if it hasn't
already shown, that Creekstone Farms
Premium Beef was on the right side of
the issue in regards to bovine spongiform encephalopathy testing. If the industry tested all cattle slaughtered for
B.S.E., the cost would be $1.4 million
to $2 million per week. If the industry
tested only steers and heifers, which
are generally used to produce products
destined to Japan, the cost would be $1
million or less per week. The cost quoted in the M&P article, "Tainted Beef,"
(see January 2005 issue, Page 20) for
the industry to manage the "B.S.E.
problem" is $100 million per week.
Creekstone believed 14 months ago
that the cost-benefit analysis showed
that testing was the right thing to do.
That wasn't the only thing that motivated us to want to test. What motivated us was the fact that the customer
wanted to test and was willing to pay
for testing. The irony of the situation is
that someone convinced the cattle producers that they would end up paying
for the cost of B.S.E. testing. In reality
the loss in live cattle prices due to the
loss of foreign markets is 100 times the
cost of the testing. I never thought the
cattle producers would end up paying
for B.S.E. testing to start with, but it
looks like the cattle producers paid
anyway.
Creekstone isn't exporting yet - no
one really knows when that will happen. I wish we could relish in the
satisfaction of being right, but we can't

MEAT&POULTRY

April 2005

be satisfied when we see the damage
that has been done to the U.S. beef
industry, from the calving person to
the large packers. American beef used
to be King. It is shameful what the
leadership of the big packers, National
Cattlemen's Beef Association and the
U.S. Dept. of Agriculture has done to
the best beef brand in the world.
James Wilson
Director of Technical Services
Creekstone Farms Premium Beef
Arkansas City, Kan.

Editor:
Regarding your editorial in the February
2005 issue (see "Counter intelligence,"
Page 8): That is very good insight. Uninformed retail meat department workers are a legitimate concern. Especially
with further industry consolidations
making companies larger, it becomes
even more difficult to trickle down the
info to the place where the rubber meets
the road, the store. Couple that with the
shortage of true "meat cutters" and the
problem gets exacerbated. The question then is: Does it pay to specialize
and make premium brands? It seems to
pay, since that appears to be the growing market if you look at the meatcase
space usage.
Don Peter
Hutchinson, Kan.

www.MEATPOULTRY.com

Editor:
I just finished reading the article,
"Smokehouse maintenance," (see
M&P, February 2005, Page 28). In
the story there are two pictures showing employees handling ready-to-eat
products without wearing bouffant hair
nets. In addition, it appears that the
person handling the product on Page 28
does not have latex gloves to separate
his bare hands from the product hanging on the cooking trees. In the future,
please refrain from publishing pictures
in your magazine that reinforce poor
practices. We in the meat industry
work hard to educate our employees to
follow Good Manufacturing Practices
and do not need to see pictures depicting otherwise.
The article covering smokehouse
maintenance was excellent and timely,
but the lack of appropriate head covering and handling product with bare
hands detracted from the credibility of
the article.
Doug Pratt Jr.
Q.A. Manager
Fulton Provision Co.
Portland, Ore.

http://www.MEATPOULTRY.com

Meat + Poultry - April 2005

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