Caviness has operated for more than 50 years, growing from 15 head per day in the 1960s to more than 1,600 per day. Caviness is the eighth largest packer in the nation.
Trevor Caviness, Caviness Pack- ers, says they’ve started letting ranchers know about the buckshot they are fi nding to help solve the problem.
we’ve discovered buckshot in the harvest and fabrication process. It’s an effort to give ranchers a heads-up on the problem, an informational tool that we hope will help solve or reduce the problem.” Caviness is a third-generation
packer in operation more than 50 years. Trevor’s father, Terry, is CEO of their operation. His brother, Re- gan, is vice president and involved in cattle procurement. “My grandfather, Pete Caviness,
was a lifelong cattle buyer before buying a small processing plant in Hereford in 1962,” Trevor Cavi- ness says. The plant steadily grew from
a 15- to 20-head-per-day facility. It had a major expansion in 2005 and now harvests about 1,650 cattle per day. That will increase to about 1,800 soon. A large portion of the
says. “We averaged 2 carcasses per day. From September through De- cember 2012, we discovered buck- shot in carcasses from 108 different sources. Of those, 70 percent were from sale barns and 30 percent were from ranchers. We averaged 2.76 head per day.”
Zero tolerance Caviness processes more than
4 million pounds of beef products weekly. But if 1 quarter-pound beef patty escapes with 1 lead shot, that’s too many. “It’s a zero tolerance,” Caviness says. Sure, many a rancher has had
that stubborn cow or bull that won’t budge out of a thicket or the back 40. A small few may have thought about scaring the cantankerous cat- tle with a little birdshot as a herding tool. “That’s obviously not the right
case, packers like Caviness and their buyers are striving to “put on the safety” when it comes to shotguns shooting cattle.
Not confi ned to cows or certain geographic regions “Again, we’re trying to be proac-
tive to determine where the source is coming from. We’re not find- ing that it is specifi c to a state or region,” Caviness says. “Propor- tionately, we see about an equal percentage of carcasses containing buckshot from Texas cattle as we do from Arkansas. “The percentages are just as high
from Kansas, Colorado or New Mex- ico as they are from Oklahoma and Texas. We see incidences of buck- shot from cattle from all over our procurement area.” It’s not only cows that show up
From Jan. 1 to 19, Caviness found birdshot in an average of 2 carcasses per day.
processed beef goes toward ground beef production and marketing by Caviness’s Amarillo facility, as well as major buyers elsewhere. Caviness is the eighth largest
packer in the nation. Cattle include 70 percent beef cattle and 30 per- cent dairy. None are immune from buckshot fi ndings. “Just this year, from Jan.1
through Jan. 19, we isolated car- casses containing buckshot from 27 different suppliers,” Caviness
tscra.org
thing to do,” Caviness says. “Some- thing like that can make ranchers lose credibility.” There are no true answers as to
the origin of buckshot in cattle. But it’s likely from bird hunters whose shotgun blasts spray pellets beyond the target. Ranches with hunting leases may see more problems than others. There could also be cases of ornery youngsters trying out that new shotgun they found under the tree at Christmas. Whatever the
at packers with buckshot in their hides and deeper. “We also receive grain-fed cattle from feedyards con- taining buckshot,” Caviness says. Caviness says a large buyer
of the company’s beef and major ground beef processor notes that overall, there is a greater incidence of buckshot found in beef during key months of the years. For exam- ple (see chart), the largest percent- age of occurrences result in May and June, during branding season
April 2013 The Cattleman 61
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