Agricultural News
Beef Cattle Producers Continue to Wait on Outcome of Eastern Livestock Bankruptcy
Sun, 28 Aug 2011 15:15:11 CDT
Past President of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association John Queen says that it is amazing how little new information cattle producers have when it comes to the status and eventual disposition of the Eastern Livestock bankruptcy case. Queen's livestock auction company in western North Carolina was one of many cattle companies that were stung by the Fifth Third Bank decision to stop payment on all checks written by Eastern Livestock at the beginning of November, 2010. No one knows how many millions of dollars were snatched from the accounts of cattlemen who sold cattle to Eastern and have yet to see a dime on those sales.
Queen says that the entire cattle industry has been failed by the lack of action by the USDA's GIPSA- the agency responsible for following the business conducted by Eastern Livestock. Queen says that GIPSA has audited his relatively small business three times over the last two years, but has reluctantly admitted they had not audited Eastern Livestock since at least 2005. He adds that if GIPSA was not competent enough to perform an audit on the nation's largest livestock dealer- they should have hired an outside independent company to perform an audit at some point along the way.
Queen adds that Eastern Livestock's bank, Fifth Third, did not do their homework as to the amount of business that Eastern claimed they were doing in the final year before checks started bouncing this past October. Eastern claimed they had tripled their business in 2009 and early 2010 compared to just a few months earlier, which earned them a larger line of credit which they quickly utilized. Queen says that Eastern was claiming to Fifth Third that their volume of cattle transactions were greater than the entire universe of cattle trades within the US. Queen contends that Fifth Third carefully chose their time to stop honoring the checks written by Eastern- choosing to stop honoring those checks at the peak of the fall cattle run, when Eastern would have a maximum amount of money running through their account.
We get an update where the cattle industry is witht he Eastern Livestock case- as told by auction barn/electronic market and cattle producer John Queen. Queen was a part of a tremendous lineup of speakers that the 2011 Wheatland Stocker Conference laid claim to.
To learn more about the livestock auction market that Queen owns and has been able to keep open despite the lost of a substantial amount revenue because of the Eastern Bankruptcy- click here.
Queen is our guest on today's Beef Buzz, with an update for you about the status of getting money returned from Eastern Livestock and/or its bank, Fifth Third Bank.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the region on the Radio Oklahoma Network- but is also a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the listen bar below for today's show- and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
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