What did Johanns say at the USMEF Board of Directors meeting?

Is having a native-borne son running the USDA - meaning the offspring of an Iowa dairyman and the ex-governer of Nebraska - a good thing for the cattle business? Stripping away the usual government head-nodding from his USMEF Board of Directors speech this morning, the answer has to be yes.

As a gauge of his popularity, he received a standing ovation before he spoke. More importantly, he even enjoyed a standing ovation when he wrapped up his speech with this pointed statement: "Nothing good comes to agriculture from stifling trade," a comment that underlined his single-minded drive to reopen the Canadian border as soon as possible.

"I'm doing my dream job," is always a good way to lead off a speech, especially is you can back up that statement with real content. Continuing with "I will not rest until Japan opens it borders to American Beef products" delivered the content.

He came down strongly behind opening all borders to free agricultural trade, stating that our approach to Canada can be no different than our approach to Japan. If we expect the Japanese to accept our beef and our systems of insuring safety, then we must accept the Canadian assurances. "The fact is, Canadian beef is safe," he said.

"The North American trade issue is more than a two-way street, it's a super highway," he continued.

Expressing concern about the long-term effects of the ban on Canadian cattle, he said as long as the border is closed, our U.S. beef industry will suffer. In Utah, cattle processing has dropped by 20% and people are losing jobs.

Johanns also backed CAFTA with a simple argument: the region is an expanding marketplace with 44 million potential customers. "About 99% of their products imported into the U.S. are duty free and we don't currently enjoy the same access to their markets," he said. "We must have a level playing field. CAFTA will help solve that problem."

Alan Smith, USMEF chair, made an obvious comment as Johanns left the stage. "The Secretary is fully engaged in U.S. agriculture," he said.

Supremes OK "Beef, it's what's for dinner"

In a strongly worded decision, the Supreme Court said the U.S. government could force cattlemen to pay for the “Beef: It's what's for dinner” marketing program, even if individual cattle producers objected to the campaign.

The decision will create some controversy based on the court’s opinion that the marketing campaign is a form of “government speech” immune to the first amendment challenge that ranchers in South Dakota and Montana used to strike down the program in an earlier court case.

The 6-3 decision is a defeat for other cases in agriculture opposing similar mandatory fees for marketing programs including milk, pork and cotton.

“The message set out in the beef promotions is from beginning to end the message established by the federal government, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist as well as Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Clarence Thomas and Stephen G. Breyer.

Dissenting Justices David H. Souter, John Paul Stevens and Anthony Kennedy, said the campaign was not government speech. Souter said if the government seeks to “compel specific groups to fund speech with targeted taxes, it must make itself politically accountable for indicating that the content actually is a government message.”

In a mid-day telephone conference, an elated Terry Stokes of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association said the decision was good news for American agriculture and stated it was time for the beef industry to come together to help build demand. “We need to proceed with one plan, one budget, one voice,” he said.

Where's the beef? Not in BK's new product

Burger King® Corporation went to Battle Creek, hardly the center of the beef business, for their new BK VEGGIE® Burger. The center piece of the faux burger comes from the cereal cities Kellogg's Morningstar Farms division, the largest producer of what’s politely termed “meat analogs” in the U.S.

Burger King Corporation will be the only quick service restaurant to offer a vegetarian burger nationally; a marketing effort that proved a failure in the past for such heavyweights as McDonald’s who test marketed the idea about 5 years ago. BK plans to run the table, though, with a nationwide roll out by the end of the month. No word on the reaction from BK franchisees who operate about 90% of the chain’s restaurants.

Suggesting that the formulation might not be quite the same as Morningstar Farms supermarket product, a Kellogg spokesman said the patty is made with “the same good taste and healthy ingredients” as the retail veggie burger. Best guess: the patty was built to hit a price point that will let the burger sell competitively with real meat.

The marketing team at BK understands the vegetarian sensibilities, though, and the beefless burger will be cooked separately from meat products. With the number of serious vegetarians stagnating at less than 2% according to some estimates, the market potential may be just too small, though, for a QSR selling to a mass market.

Good-for-you foods waste away at QSR's

"Americans have always had the means to eat healthier, but they do not have the will." Harry Balzer, vice president, NPD.

In a recent survey, "tasty" food was critical to 93.6 percent of fast-food consumers. The availability of healthy/nutritious food tipped the opinion scale at 69.1 percent, reported Sandelman & Associates, which surveyed 600 consumers. If you watch fast food sales, here is a safe bet: approximately 69.1% of the survey respondents were lying.

Dr. Steven Witherly, a food development consultant, is working on a book: "Why People Like Junk Food: Food Pleasure Explained." He thinks we're genetically programmed to seek fat, sugar and salt. He might have a point. Full fat foods are big, fat hits wherever they’re served. The nuts and berries diet, despite heavy and politically correct promotion, just sits there.

Cases in point:
· Hardee's same-store sales jumped 4.4 percent after the Monster Thickburger hit the service counter with a bang.
· Carl's Jr. just added a big, new Big Breakfast Burrito, an 810 calorie morning monster that’s fueling significant growth to their morning business.
· Hardee's dropped their machine regurgitated soft-serve shake and introduced a 715-calorie Hand-Scooped Ice Cream Shake. Shake sales doubled.
· Burger King’s Enormous Omelette Sandwich brought in 20% more breakfast business.
· Pizza Hut’s triple cheese stuffed crust pizza accounts for 20% of their dinner business and their Family Race Pack; a large pizza, bread sticks, cinnamon sticks and a 2 liter Pepsi, is a major league hit.
· IHOP VP John Koch said “Because fewer than 1 percent of guests "show any meaningful interest in healthy foods,” the pancake house changed its limited-time promotion of Stuffed French Toast (filled with sweetened cream cheese) into a full-time menu item.
· Ben & Jerry's dropped all three of its no-carb, no-taste ice cream flavors and, showing the kind of market knowledge that made the company such a sales success, introduced a wider cone that holds two scoops of their16% butterfat ice cream instead of just one.
· KFC is finally returning to its southern fried roots and bringing back the Kentucky Fried Chicken name, along with new menu items with menu items like candied yams, spicy gravy and sweet potato pie. It's also extending its popular line of chicken Snackers to include sausage.

"It's all about taste," said Andy Puzder, CEO of CKE Enterprises, the parent company of both Hardees and Carl’s Jr. He led those two quick service restaurants out of the closet on the healthy food issue. Following the taste monkey led the company to its first profitable year of operation since 1999. His favorite breakfast? One of those big, new Breakfast Burritos, hash browns and a Dr Pepper.

Paris bites Carl's big burgers

Paris Hilton's burger chomping performance in a television commercial for Carl’s Jr was been deemed too explicit to broadcast by gun shy TV execs still wounded by Janet Jackson. One of the few people who’ve seen the ad said "Paris is wearing skimpy swimwear while washing a Bentley with hoses spurting all around her. It's very suggestive."

CKE Restaurants, which profits nicely with politically incorrect advertising, actually paid the talent-free socialite/performance artist for a new Carl's Jr. TV spot that "couldn't be more pornographic," said the source. "It's about as racy as I've seen."

Set to the song "I Love Paris in the Springtime," the 30-second spot, via Mendelsohn/Zien in Los Angeles, shows Hilton touting the BBQ Six Dollar Burger. It plays off her catch phrase, "That's hot."

Although it probably won’t be seen uncut on network TV, the semi-official ban has made it a “newsworthy” event for TV tabloids like Entertainment Tonight which will air parts of it during tonight’s sweeps month telecast.

CKE has a long history of pandering to its core audience with recent ads that showed a woman putting a fist in her mouth and another where a woman sits on a slowly grinding mechanical bull while eating a burger.

In a comment that shows he’s still mentally part of his younger male demographic, Brad Haley, Executive V.P. of marketing at Carl's Jr. said, "We liken our advertising to more of what the beer brands do. There's a lot of male attitude, personality and edge. Sometimes sex appeal enters into it on occasion. It's something younger guys are interested in." He’s obviously chasing after the Miller Lite® battling babes crowd.

The strategy works. The chain hit $1.4 billion in sales last year, up from $1 billion in 2003. It also reported 25 consecutive months of same-store sales increases.

In a reference to a competing burger chain, Tonight’s Jay Leno said, “That's funny. She seems more like an In-And-Out girl.”

Sanderson Farms tries to grow market share

Sanderson Farms, Inc. will expand their Collins, Mississippi, poultry processing facility and hatchery to process product exclusively for the big bird deboning market. The $20 million project will include an expansion of the Collins hatchery, retrofitting certain equipment in the Collins processing plant and the construction of a new feed mill.

Joe F. Sanderson, Jr., chairman and c.e.o. of Sanderson Farms, said, "Our new Georgia facility will be dedicated exclusively to serving retail customers and our new state-of-the-art poultry complex is closer to our growing list of customers located in the southeast. With the conversion of the Collins plant to a larger weight bird, and the additional capacity of 150,000 head per week created by the expansion project, Sanderson Farms will add approximately 2.2 million pounds per week of fresh chicken processing capacity, approximately a 7.3% increase over current capacity."

Not said was where Sanderson intends to sell the additional capacity in a market with limited growth potential.

Temple Grandin resigns KFC post

In a public relations SNAFU of monumental proportions, KFC asked their animal welfare consultants to sign an agreement preventing them from speaking publicly about its policies on animal welfare. Two of them have pointedly resigned over the issue. Temple Grandin of Colorado State University, the most well-known and respected voice in animal handling, led the walkout followed by Ian Duncan of the University of Guelph.

Grandin commented in a story filed by Reuters News Service, "I resigned because there is a document that I can't sign. I feel very strongly that I can talk freely to the press about how the program's working, what's been going on with the program." Duncan agreed with her position.

Grandin works with McDonald's Corp., Wendy's International Inc., and Burger King Corp. and has advised the American Meat Institute, the Food Marketing Institute and the National Cattlemens Beef Association on animal handling issues.

Losing someone of Grandin’s stature when PETA has KFC squarely in their sites will cost YUM! Brands, owners of the KFC franchise, some serious good will and believability as they attempt to take on the radical and media savvy special interest group and its "intellectually" underendowed spokesperson Pamela Anderson this summer.