PUB AFRS 5750H Business and Government Relationship

Analyze the case and answer the questions:

In April of 2017, What should Ms Pinto do about the public policy issue and why?

Introduction

US meat industry has been facing the strong political forces, both in the regulatory and legislative arena. It has been observed that the meat industry generally targets to establish the approaches to the lesser number of lawmakers instead of attempting to gain influence or access to the different regulatory figures (Helme 2013). However, in spite of investing the lesser financial capital, the meat industry has succeeded in maintaining the food safety parameter in recent days. However, the increasing politics in the meat industry in US has been making the business much complicated. The study is focusing on the case scenario of Maverick Ranch Natural Meats. After returning to Denver, Mary Jane Pinto was hired in this company to address the public policy issues associated with the meat industry. The identification of the allies, enemies, customers, coalition partners, and the suppliers will be presented in this study. The exploration of the case study will define the method of gaining more supports from the people in current business industry.

Background of the Case Study

Maverick Ranch Natural Meats is the small beef firm based in Denver and it produces the beef free from steroids, pesticides, and steroids. At the initial stage, in 1995, the owner Bobbi Moore and Roy started serving the meat from one store in Colorado. Later, it expanded over 200 producers from the states of western countries. The company is currently exporting the beef to nearly 1,100 grocery stores all over US (Maverickranchmeats.com 2017). It is quite clear to the company that the government interference and the affairs are increasing the complexities in the industry. Therefore, the company hired Ms. Pinto to deal with such politics. She is currently holding the position of the Director of Government and Regulatory Affairs.

Maverick is quite aware of the associated politics over the food industry, especially in the beef industry. The meat producers have been facing the issues with the agricultural supports derived from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Agricultural Committees of in the House of Representatives and Senate (Vidgen and Gallegos 2014). The current century is still focusing on the concerns related to the food security. However, the security related to the food and meat industry is associated with different aspects, such as human health concerns regarding the obesity issues, concerns about fast food, and coronary and cardiac diet and disease (Kim 2014). On the other hand, it was notified that due to the publication of different books and scandals about the negative effects of eating beef raised the concerns related to beef consumptions. Additionally, the different NGOs protested against the beef producing and they even started undertaking the campaigns to educate people for preventing beef consumption also hampered the business (Zhang et al. 2014). Therefore, the company hired Ms Pinto to deal with such politics and issue the proper policy guidance to protect the meat industry. The study will thus focus on the mentioned issues. Accordingly, it will provide the fruitful insights related to the suggestions to protect the beef industry in US by securing the competitive ground.

Suggestions of Ms. Pinto and Reasons

Ms. Pinto is hired to deal with the issues related to the public policies in the beef industry. She has noticed that the major issues with the public policy in beef industry in 2017 are associated with three major factors (Meyer 2014). The first is the passing of congressional bill that is called Food Guides: the Healthy Plate. In this policy, a traditional Food Pyramid tool was created to help the customers in selecting the preferable and healthier food to eat. However, there is the criticism against this tool. Guthrie, Mancino and Lin (2015) explained that the tool fails to distinguish between the healthy and unhealthy diets as referred by the certified dieticians and nutritionists. The second issue was found in the Food Label Act, which was imposed by the Organic Foods Association (OFA) (Place 2014). Even though the institution has been advocating the labels on food, the consumers are unable to understand the healthier ingredients that they should consume. The beef industry has been even facing issues with the trading process with the European Union (Taylor 2016). The controversies found in judging the increasing level of the steroid in beef. It affected the industry since the US is the major exporter of beef in European countries.  Hence, the issues created the significant obligations. Considering such issues, Ms. Pinto suggested to pay attention on the allies, suppliers, customers, and the coalition partners.

It is noted that the US beef industry has been exporting the beefs in western countries and European countries. The exporting partners of US beef industry are as follows:

Countries (US Beef Exports)	Percentage
Middle East	36%
Russia	68%
Central and South America	83%

Maverick even needs to concentrate on targeting the partnerships with Japan and South Korea for the beneficial advertisement strategies. The campaigns “We Care” in Japan and “To Trust” in South Korea are quite beneficial for the company to protest against the governmental policies against the beef exports (Panagiotou and Stavrakoudis 2016). Ms Pinto needs to highlight these campaigns and advise the company to undertake the similar advertising campaign to ensure the long run sustainability of the beef industry in US. The religious issues are one of the major concerns for the US beef industry (Wheeler, Kalchayanand and Bosilevac 2014). The NGO’s and the religious views of the western countries against the Islamic food culture are the major enemies of US beef industry (Nestle 2013).

Recommendations 

The customers of Maverick are the people from Middle East, Central and South America, Russia, Japan, and South Korea. The US beef industry is focusing on expanding the business in different countries. It was notified that due to the publication of different books and scandals about the negative effects of eating beef raised the concerns related to beef consumptions. Additionally, the different NGOs protested against the beef producing and they even started undertaking the campaigns to educate people for preventing beef consumption also hampered the business. Therefore, the company hired Ms Pinto to deal with such politics and issue the proper policy guidance to protect the meat industry. However, considering the challenges coming from the US government policies, Ms. Pinto has paid attention on the following recommendations.

• It is necessary for the company to restructure the distribution process of exporting beefs in other countries.
• The government policies are even falsified due to which the beef industry in US have been suffering in exporting the meat. Therefore, it is essential to present the medical evidence to prove that the beef supplied by the company is free from steroids, hormones, and pesticides.
• The company requires hiring the efficient dieticians, nutritionist, and medical practitioners to test the meat during the logistic process.
• The distribution and logistics process will include the filtering machine to purify the meats before these are supplied to the customers.
• After purifying the meets and making them free from the included pesticides, the food package will be labelled under the government trademark. It will be much helpful in increasing reliability among the target customers.
• Undertaking the campaigns to make people aware of the purification process will be helpful in suggesting the healthy food consumption.

The company requires following these recommendations to deal with the government politics in the US beef industry. The awareness spread among the target customers would be fruitful enough to distribute the beef by considering the healthier approaches.

Conclusion

The case study highlights that the government politics are the major obligations for the US beef industry. Maverick is the developing beef distributing company that hired Ms. Pinto to deal with the governmental politics against the supply of the beefs. It is noticed that the US beef industry is the main exporters of beef in Western countries. The second issue was found in the Food Label Act, which was imposed by the Organic Foods Association (OFA). Even though the institution has been advocating the labels on food, the consumers are unable to understand the healthier ingredients that they should consume. However, due to the political influences and issues with the public policies, the beef industry in US has been facing the major issues. Therefore, it is essential for the company to engage the certified dieticians and nutritionists to test the beef before it is supplied to the consumers. Distribution and logistics process will include the filtering machine to purify the meats before these are supplied to the customers. The campaigns “We Care” in Japan and “To Trust” in South Korea are quite beneficial for the company to protest against the governmental policies against the beef exports. In spite of investing the lesser financial capital, the meat industry has succeeded in maintaining the food safety parameter in recent days. However, the increasing politics in the meat industry in US has been making the business much complicated. Hence, it is necessary to follow these recommendations for ensuring the growth of the US beef industry.

References

Guthrie, J., Mancino, L. and Lin, C.T.J., 2015. Nudging consumers toward better food choices: policy approaches to changing food consumption behaviors. Psychology & Marketing, 32(5), pp.501-511.

Helme, M.A., 2013. Genetically modified food fight: The FDA should step up to the regulatory plate so states do not cross the constitutional line. Minn. L. Rev., 98, p.356.

Kim, J., 2014. The networked public, multitentacled participation, and collaborative expertise: US beef and the Korean candlelight protest. East Asian Science, Technology and Society, 8(2), pp.229-252.

Maverickranchmeats.com, 2017. Maverick Ranch: Natural and Organic Meats. [online] Maverickranchmeats.com. Available at: <http://maverickranchmeats.com/> [Accessed 27 Apr. 2017].

Meyer, A., 2014, July. Making More, But Using Less: The Future of the US Beef Industry with a Reduced Cowherd and the Challenge to Feed the US and the World; Session 1. The U, S. Stocker and Feedlot Industries. In 2014 ADSA-ASAS-CSAS Joint Annual Meeting. Asas.

Nestle, M., 2013. Food politics: How the food industry influences nutrition and health (Vol. 3). Univ of California Press.

Panagiotou, D. and Stavrakoudis, A., 2016. Price dependence between different beef cuts and quality grades: a copula approach at the retail level for the US beef industry. Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization, 14(1), pp.121-131.

Place, S.E., 2014. Future of Sustainable Beef in the United States. Animal Production, 183, p.188.

Taylor, J., 2016, July. Detection and selection against early embryonic lethals in US beef breeds. In 2016 Joint Annual Meeting. Asas.

Vidgen, H.A. and Gallegos, D., 2014. Defining food literacy and its components. Appetite, 76, pp.50-59.

Wheeler, T.L., Kalchayanand, N. and Bosilevac, J.M., 2014. Pre-and post-harvest interventions to reduce pathogen contamination in the US beef industry. Meat science, 98(3), pp.372-382.

Zhang, Q., Liu, S., Liu, R., Xue, H. and Wang, Y., 2014. Food policy approaches to obesity prevention: An international perspective. Current obesity reports, 3(2), pp.171-182.