Carol Lorenzen is a professor and meat extension specialist with the University of Missouri.

“I’m not sure the consumer is getting that message,” Lorenzen tells Brownfield, “We have seen the plants that have been making this reducing their workforce and even closing.”

Lorenzen says it would be a different way of processing for regular beef plants to pick up the slack.

“It does have some specialized equipment. There are some other processes that are similar to this. Right now, I think that the future of Lean Finely Textured Beef is in question,” Lorenzen says, “Hopefully, because of the education that has been put forth by a lot of people and the media that maybe consumers will accept (it) in the future.”

Lorenzen says there are some processors who use different ways of killing bacteria in the product other than the “puff” of food grade ammonia used during the LFTB process.

But Vilsack says changing report release times is not as simple as it sounds.

“A decision as to timing and information being accessible can potentially make the difference of millions of dollars, one way or the other, to those who are trading,” Vilsack says, “and now we have essentially two competing entities that have different hours that don’t necessarily align.”

Those competing entities are the CME Group and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which recently expanded its trading in grain futures. 

The Kansas City Board of Trade and MGEX, formerly the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, have followed suit and expanded their trading hours as well.

The challenge, Vilsack says, is to continue providing the information in a transparent and equitable way, “to do it in a very timely way, but not to distort the market or provide an undue advantage to someone or some entity as a result.”

USDA’s monthly crop reports are released at 7:30 a.m. Central time, when grain trading has traditionally been halted.

Vilsack made his comments during a conference call with reporters on Tuesday.

AUDIO: Tom Vilsack (1:48 MP3)

According to committee chair Debbie Stabenow, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has indicated he will bring up the bill the first week of June.

In preparation, Politico is reporting that Stabenow is reaching out to southern lawmakers in an effort to bridge the gap that split her committee last month and put her at odds with allies in the House. According to Politico, backroom talks are focused on putting a modest counter cyclical program together as a safety net for rice and peanuts.

In his weekly conference call with reporters, Senate Ag Committee member Chuck Grassley of Iowa had this reaction.

“I wouldn’t want to say that some changes couldn’t be made.  But if you’re talking about going back to target prices for cotton—or maybe more so for peanuts and rice—I think that’s a non-starter,” Grassley says. “If there’s some sort of slight changes—refinements that can be made to what we have—I wouldn’t rule that out.”

Pundits say a potential deal with southerners in the Senate must be considered as a bridge to a future House-Senate conference on the farm bill.

Lawmakers in the House are much more sympathetic to the southern concerns.

AUDIO: Excerpts from Grassley’s 5/22/12 conference call with reporters (5:33 MP)

House Ag Committee leaders have made it clear they want to include a target-price program in the bill, which puts them at odds with their Senate counterparts and some commodity organizations. 

Steve Wellman of Syracuse, Nebraska, president of the American Soybean Association (ASA), tells Brownfield that ASA would be open to a target price program, as long as it doesn’t distort farmers’ planting decisions.

“We’re open to a target price program as long as it’s decoupled from planted acres,” Wellman says. 

“The number one priority for ASA in Title I programs is for planting flexibility—letting producers make their own decisions on planting based on the marketplace and not on a government program,” Wellman adds.

Wellman, who testified at one of the final subcommittee hearings in Washington last week, says ASA supports the Senate Ag Committee’s new Agriculture Risk Coverage—or ARC—program. 

AUDIO: Steve Wellman (6:00 MP3)

U.S. placements on to feed last month came out at 1.52 million head or 85% of a year ago, towards the low end of estimates and less than the average guess of 88.4%. That decline’s linked to the lower supply of feeders and is expected to lead to a tighter supply of market ready numbers and even higher beef prices later this year.

With packers slowing down meat production, marketings were pegged at 1.82 million head, up slightly on the year, 8,000 head, when most analysts were anticipating a decrease.

The total amount of cattle on feed in the U.S. as of May 1 was reported at 11.1 million head, down 1% from a year ago and below the range of pre-report expectations.

Other disappearances were up 30% from last year at 78,000 head.