Manatee cattlewoman engineers cattle sale to Pakistan

By James Jones of the Bradenton Herald

Excerpt: 

Renee Strickland opened the door to U.S. cattle exports to Pakistan when she chartered a Boeing 747 and flew with 302 dairy cattle to Sialkot, Pakistan, on March 1.

The long flight was the easy part. It came after five years of frustration, planning, perseverance and negotiation.

“This was a real nail biter. We had three weeks to put this shipment together, and I got my passport at midnight, three hours before the departure to Pakistan,” she said.

“It was a pressure-cooker experience,” Strickland said, recalling how she brokered the sale and gathered cattle from Okeechobee dairies, north Florida and Kansas.

She could only wrangle those cattle after getting clearance from the U.S. and Pakistani governments, securing a health protocol, overcoming the language barrier and closing the deal with tough negotiators in Pakistan.