Farm Factor 01212020 National Bison

Duane: Duane Toews. Joining once again on the program an opportunity to catch up with Dick Gehring from Moundridge, Kansas with the National Bison Association. Dick, we think about issues within agriculture and industry. Truth in labeling, there's a lot of different industries that are feeling pretty strong about that. Bison has its own particular issue that maybe some folks wouldn't necessarily think about. Dick: We have. In the last several years, we've had an influx of imported water buffalo coming into the country. Its first showed up in the pet food sector, and it has now creeped into the human food sector as well. One of the biggest challenges is, while maybe they're not doing anything illegal, if you will, ethical considerations, are another story. They're simply calling the product buffalo instead of water buffalo. We don't have a problem with them bringing it in and selling it, but we need them to tell the whole story. You show a picture of a bison to probably 95% of the US citizens and ask them what it is, they're going to say it's a buffalo. Some of the ways that that shows up is, if they use 3% of an ingredient in their product, they're able to utilize that ingredient in the advertising. Maybe they have a picture of a bison, call it something else, you turn over the label to see what the ingredients are, and the number one ingredient on the label is buffalo. Then down around number 9 or 10 is roasted bison, and the number one ingredient was actually water buffalo, and they didn't call it that way. USDA has provisions in the verbiage to not allow that to happen, but under import that all comes under FDA. They don't have that verbiage. We've been hard at work in DC and Senator Hoeven out of North Dakota and Senator Bennett out of Colorado introduced a bipartisan bill. They're looking for support for that to have a Truth in Labeling law which would take care of that. Duane: We think about the product is significantly different for all intents and purposes. When we think about a bison or buffalo that has been raised and grain-fed in many cases, here in the United States, versus an imported product of water buffalo. Typically, I assume it's coming out of South America? Dick: Largely they're Australia but mostly India. It's a significant challenge in that it comes in way underpriced for most proteins here in the US, and there's about 140 million water buffalo in the world. Not really a welcome competitor, especially if they're trying to play it off as our product. Duane: Well, that truth in advertising, obviously a lot of folks are interested in that, to protect the producer of a product, but ultimately to protect consumers as well. Dick: That's the problem. The consumer sometimes is being duped into believing that it's our product. If there ends up being a problem, whether it's taste, whether it's quality, whatever the situation will be, we're going to be the ones with a black eye out of the deal. With that legislation not being introduced yet, they're talking about it. I think we'll get somewhere with that, but once that gets taken care of, and I think we will get there. We have some other truth in labeling issues if you will, on the horizon, and this affects cattlemen, and sheep, and pork, everybody. That being the Impossible burger and those kind of things. I'm not sure Petri dishes is where I want my meat coming from. Duane: Well, it is an issue for those alternative protein products with truth in advertising, certainly is an issue, but particularly for the bison or buffalo sector, where your market is still trying to create shelf space and gain pounds consumption within the United States. Dick: You bet. We're still a niche market and always will be. Beef does a great job of being beef, and we're not going to try and compete with that. We're happy with our own market and where we're at. We've got lots and lots of room to grow. Right now, Dave Carter, our executive director did the math and we're at 0.08-some pounds of consumption a year, so if we tripled the size of our-- we’d have enough for everybody in the world to have a quarter pound or one day a year. There's a tremendous upside to our industry and we feel very confident that longevity, long term, is looking very positive. Duane: Thanks to Dick Gehring with the National Bison Association joining us on the program. Jamie, we'll send it back to you.