WESTERN PRODUCER — The acronym is still the same but the name representing Canada’s 60,000 beef industry members has changed.
The Canadian Cattle Association launched July 7 with a new brand and logo designed to highlight the former Canadian Cattlemen’s Association move to support diversity and inclusion.
CCA president Reg Schellenberg said CCA has been the voice of beef farmers and ranchers for 90 years as the industry has grown and changed.
“It is important that our name, logo and brand also grow and be reflective of how our organization has evolved,” he said in a news release.
Tyler Fulton, president of Manitoba Beef Producers and a CCA officer-at-large, said the rebranding is part of a three-year exercise looking inward.
A summer meeting in 2019 focused on how the organization had to better communicate the positive environmental story of Canadian beef, he said.
“Then it kind of morphed into, well, if we’re going to be looking at this and doing some internal looking at what our brand looks like, maybe we need to consider a name change,” Fulton said.
“Honestly, when we looked at the name, we didn’t think that it was really representative of the organization that we had, which was a progressive modern organization that embraced and championed women in our industry.”
But he said the issue is broader than gender.
For example, people in Eastern Canada generally don’t identify as cattlemen or ranchers. A name change became more important in terms of how they view themselves and the industry, he said.
There are also partners and the vast industry network that the beef industry has become. Fulton said there are 350,000 Canadians connected to the industry.
“We consider ourselves, at least in part, the voice of that industry and not all of those would say that they are directly involved with the production of cattle,” he said.
CCA member organizations that have “cattlemen” in their names are not required to change. That would be up to them, said Fulton.
Saskatchewan Cattlemen’s Association came up against the possibility at an annual meeting in 2021, when a resolution to change the name to be more inclusive was made. It was defeated.
The SCA says it plans to discuss its name at its next board meeting.
Fulton said the CCA change was the right thing to do for a national organization that works with the federal government.
He said it was a long process with a lot of different opinions presented but there was unanimity that the brand should be inclusive “because that’s how we saw ourselves. It was hard to square.”
He pointed to the fact that women lead many of CCA’s divisions and associated programs.
“It really did make it easier to say, well we have been walking the walk but haven’t been talking the talk,” said Fulton.
Much of the discussion actually focused on being able to keep the CCA acronym, which retains the history and reputation of the organization.
Fulton said along with the brand refresh people can expect to see CCA step up its image as an environmental steward. From conservation to species-at-risk preservation to managing fires and floods to carbon sequestration and climate change, cattle production plays a role.
The new CCA logo represents the country, cattle and the environment. CCA said it builds on generations of industry-wide ecological practices that have resulted in biodiversity and many other benefits.
