China’s Cattle

I found <a href="http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?SectionID=94&SubSectionID=801&ArticleID=35109&TM=77478.55">this article</a> about the possible competition from China for the beef industry interesting. Am I overly worried about China importing meat to the US? No. Where I see the problem coming is the competition in some of the foreign markets like Japan and South Korea that China could give us. That seems a lot more realistic than China shipping Beef to the US.<br />n<br />nThis is what really surprised me though.<br />n<br />n<blockquote>China's cattle and beef production have grown significantly from 2000 to 2007, with beef production up by more than 48 percent during that span, Nelson said. During the same time, China's annual beginning stocks of beef cows grew by 20 percent (from 60 million head to 71.8 million head), and its annual production of calves grew by 51 percent (from 41.8 million head per year to 63.3 million head per year),</blockquote><br />n<br />nOver 70 million head of beef cows. I never thought of China as having that many cattle. It would be interesting to know what kind of potential capacity they have. They have all ready expanded 50%, how much more expansion can the industry take? How much grass and room is there? So far it appears domestic demand is soaking up the extra, is this going to continue? How much beef does the average Chinese eat today? These factors need to be taken into consideration before we can start shouting the sky is falling.<br />n<br />nI guess that what R-Calf sounds like here. Chicken Little running around squawking the sky is falling. They can't appear to <a href="http://www.starjournal.net/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=4&cat=48&id=1061019&more=0">win there case about beef imports from Canada</a> so they now are going to go after an easier target, China. Don't get me wrong here, China could be a problem for the beef industry down the road but this attack with so little information is a little overboard. I guess R-0Calf is trying to turn their members head from Canada to China. The information about the cattle industry in China though is extremely interesting, and informative. For that I thank R-Calf.<br />n<br />n<strong>If I panic, who is anybody going to run to? Curt Schilling</strong>