Charlie Gracey, a pillar in Canada’s beef industry, has died of heart failure. He was 88.
Association.
He campaigned for beef performance testing and lobbied for a beef checkoff levy to fund the Ontario and national associations.
He was famous for providing long-range market analyses during meetings of beef producers, explaining how the four-year beef cycle worked to pressure prices up or down – up when farmers decided to hold more females to increase their herds when prices were high, down when they culled cows and heifers because they were strapped for cash.
He became executive vice-president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association in 197o, pushed for creation of the Canfax markets information service and developed analytical programs still used within the agency.
He pushed for eradication of brucellosis, ironically since his father lost the family dairy herd to mandatory tuberculosis testing, and was vigilant about diseases such as foot and mouth that could result in a ban on international trade.
Gracey also helped develop standard dressing procedures at packing plants and spent much of his career creating and refining carcass grading systems.
He also helped establish the Canadian Beef Grading Industry, the Beef Information Centre as well as a national cattle identification program for cattle, leading to the creation of the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency.
His outspoken leadership was not without controversy in an industry that had frequent quarrels such as between cow-calf and feedlot owners who were on opposite sides of buying and selling transactions and between progressive and conservative farmers when it came to adopting new programs, policies and practices.
I really liked him.
