Ranchers applaud order on imports
Posted on Tuesday, July 8, 2008
A group of ranchers Monday praised a federal court order requiring the U. S. Department of Agriculture to revisit its decision to allow older Canadian cattle into the United States.
The trade rule in question — often referred to as the “over-30 months” rule — relaxed restrictions on the import of older Canadian cattle, and beef from those cattle, which some consider more susceptible to madcow disease.
Bill Bullard, the chief executive officer of the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, said the imports increase the chance of new cases in the United States.
Just before the trade rule went into effect in November, Bullard’s group, which represents domestic livestock producers, sued the USDA in the U. S. District Court of South Dakota, Northern Division. “We think that having the court oversee this new rulemaking will protect us from the USDA making decisions based only on wishful thinking and not on science,” Bullard said Monday. The USDA allowed no public input between January 2005 and January 2007, when the final rule was published, Judge Lawrence L. Piersol wrote in a 21-page decision Thursday. “The public needed to be notified of the USDA’s findings and the impact of those findings, as well as given an opportunity to comment on the new information or to provide additional information,” Piersol wrote.
The judge told the USDA to consider the legal fund’s objections, as well as other public input, and revise the import rule if needed. However, his ruling did not affect the current importation of older Canadian cattle and beef products.
In 2003, dozens of countries closed their borders to U. S. beef after the first cases of mad-cow were discovered in Washington state.
Most countries have returned to normal trade rules, particularly after the World Organization for Animal Health said last year that both U. S. and Canadian beef was a “controlled risk” for mad-cow disease. Mad-cow, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, has been linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare but fatal malady in humans.
Brad Wildeman, a feedlot operator in Saskatchewan province, and president of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, said Bullard’s group is interested only in protectionism.
In theory, U. S. cattlemen could get higher prices if domestic packers such as Springdale-based Tyson Foods Inc. are restricted to buying cattle from U. S. producers.
“There’s no question that this thing is blown way, way out of proportion,” Wildeman said Monday. “The risk is extremely low. It’s more likely that you will be struck by lightning than get [variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease ], and that has always been the case.” A call to the USDA was not returned Monday. Charles Miller, a spokesman for the U. S. Department of Justice, which represents the USDA in the suit, said Piersol’s order is being reviewed and attorneys have yet to determine the next step.
Only about 130 cases of vari- ant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease were found in humans worldwide between 1996 and 2002, mostly in Great Britain, the World Health Organization estimates.
Just three cows have been diagnosed with mad-cow disease in the United States, and 14 have been discovered in Canada — the latest being last week. That’s compared with the 181, 376 cases discovered in Great Britain since 1986.
Canadian cattlemen say they need access to the U. S. market because economics at home are hurting their industry. Less restrictive trade rules give Canadian cattlemen more places to ship their product, leading to more stability in the North American cattle market and higher prices for Canadian ranchers, analysts say.
Canadian and U. S. cattle producers have been rocked by high grain costs, which are largely driven by rises in the cost for commodity corn. Canadian cattlemen are also being harmed by the appreciation of the Canadian dollar versus the U. S. dollar, which makes their cattle relatively more expensive to U. S. packers, Wildeman said. Bullard argues that the “commingling” of Canadian and U. S. cattle irks large beef buyers like South Korea and Japan, which effectively closed their borders to U. S. beef after 2003. Wildeman points out that all of Canada’s confirmed cases of madcow were found through routine surveillance, and not at the slaughterhouse. “We have yet to have a single country change the status of our imports because of these cases we are finding,” Wildeman said.
To contact this reporter: dirvin@arkansasonline. com
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