Señor

Josephine Smart:

Buenos Dias, good morning, I apologize for presenting this paper in English and I will like to begin thanking the organizer for including me in this significant symposium. For this paper presentation I’m going to talk about the agricultural sector, specifically about the integrated cattle and beef factor that links Canada, the United States and Mexico. I use this discussionthat address a key question, and that question is, how does integration or this integration, in cattle and beef production unhands or disadvantage small and medium size enterprises?

The data I’m presenting today are based on a longitudinal research on conducting the province of Alberta since 2006, so the date is based on Canadian situation, but the general conclusion or observations are made Ithink applicable on cattle and beef production in North America and outsider of North America.

In order to do this discussion, I decided to filter all the data through a particular case study using BSE or “mad cow disease” something local, mad cow disease is a zooenotic disease, which means it can be transmitted, from animal to human and from human to animal, because of this, zooenotic diseasesare in the same time an animal health issue a public health issue and it has also become a major trade issue, now, that is how I’m going to construct my presentation.

Right the way I want you to let you know that I have 3 major observations,

Number 1: Market integration has often been lauded or discussed as a desirable outcome because with gridca integration regional or global, you have amuch quicker access to markets so if you are an exporter, you want to see that kind of integration, because economically it makes sense, so my first observation is this, while economic integration has merits, it also has inherited vulnerabilities for the enterprises that are involved and I will show you in my date that small and medium sized cattle and beef producers can be hurt very badly when thiseconomic integration has not worked well or when this economic integration works in a particular way.

My 2nd observation: Is that, whenever you have a trade and economic crisis, that are social cost to the producers and that social cost is very often under discussed and not as well understood as possible and there are serious implications to the productivity in the sector and the futuresustainability of that sector when we don’t pay attention to the social costs.

3rd observation: In today’s global economy, we are doing more and more about zooenotic disease to securitization and biosecurity, for the simple reason that every country wants to save health on public health and animal health, The changes on this kind of protocol is international and global and this is highly integratedand what it translates in to factesses is that there are changes there will be more changes in standards, standards regarding animal management, regarding food processing, and regarding food quality, anytime you have a change in standards it tends to disadvantages small and medium enterprises because it is always a cost in implementation and that cost very often is absorbed by the people on thebottom of the production chain. So in North America, when you look at cattle and beef production, at the bottom with the biggest numbers, are the cow cuff producers, people who raise cattle to produce baby cows and then they fit in to various layers, the feed lots, the packing plans, and then they go to the consumers through the retailers or servers.

Let me begin now to give you some of my data:In 2003, Canada, we had our first case of BSE, in May 21st when that was announced, the whole world closed the market to Canadian beef. When that happens, nothing moves, bovine semen, embryos, livestock, beef and all beef products, nothing moves. What happened? The farmers had to keep they’re cattle, there’s a problem in keeping the cattle because the cattle, grow, the cows get pregnant, they...