Lakeside to increase production capacity

13/05/05 Lakeside Packers will soon take another step in the effort to reduce the oversupply of Canadian cattle. The chief executive of Tyson Foods, which owns Lakeside, has announced that the Alberta plant plans to begin increasing its beef slaughter capacity in mid-June. The change is the result of a $17 million plant expansion project, which has been underway since last fall. The Lakeside plant has been operating at maximum capacity for much of the past year and a half because of record-large Canadian cattle supplies.

The plant's capital investment has involved expanding the plant's beef carcass coolers and streamlining parts of the beef slaughter operation. The changes will increase Lakeside's beef slaughter capacity from approximately 3,800 cattle per day to 4,700. While some aspects of the project will not be finished until fall, enough have been completed that plant officials expect to begin gradually ramping up production next month.

The specific timing will largely be driven by the company's ability to hire additional workers. The expansion is expected to create as many as 300 additional jobs, eventually increasing the plant's workforce to 2,700 Team Members.

Tyson Foods also continues to support efforts to reopen the U.S. border to Canadian cattle. Last month the company filed a brief in support of a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) appeal of a court decision that has delayed the reopening of the U.S. border to Canadian cattle imports. The company brief calls the court decision "bad" law and "bad" for consumers and notes there is no scientific basis for keeping the border closed.

A preliminary injunction was granted in early March by a federal judge in Montana at the request of the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF). The injunction has prevented implementation of USDA's minimal-risk rule, which would re-establish U.S. trade with Canada for live cattle less than 30 months of age.

Tyson continues to run its U.S. beef plants at reduced levels of production due, in part, to the continued U.S. ban on Canadian cattle. About three to five percent of the cattle purchased for the company's domestic plants have historically come from Canada. Earlier this year the company temporarily suspended operations for more than a month at four plants as well as second shift processing at another facility.