WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture's decision last week to move forward with plans to resume live cattle imports from Canada beginning March 7, despite confirmation of a second case of mad cow disease in Alberta, triggered a debate among beef processors and some ranchers regarding the appropriateness of the decision. Although beef industry experts contacted by SN declined to speculate on how the decision might affect beef prices in the coming year, an influx of calves and young slaughter-weight cattle could help ease tight American cattle inventories during what may be another year of record domestic demand.
A coalition of U.S. ranchers led by R-Calf -- United Stockgrowers of America -- described USDA's decision as "dangerously premature," arguing the agency was, in effect, choosing to relax U.S. safety standards in order to give processors and packers access to a less expensive supply of beef.
"Our general concern is that the United States has long practiced a very successful program to prevent the introduction of BSE into the country," said Bill Bullard, chief executive officer, R-Calf. "We view this as an abandonment of that historically successful, science-based policy.
"USDA is now substituting that for a policy of risk management," he said. "They're saying, 'No longer will we make efforts to prevent the introduction of the disease into our country. We'll now learn to live with the disease by managing the risk."'
As many as 2 million Canadian cattle, or 6% of the total cattle slaughtered in the United States, could be shipped into the states when the 19-month ban is lifted, the USDA said. The Bank of Montreal said the ban has produced a glut of cattle in the country, and has cost Canadian ranchers and processors up to $4.2 billion U.S.
The new import policies may also make it harder for U.S. suppliers to renew trade with Asian countries like Japan -- the largest importer of U.S. beef -- which banned beef products from the United States after the December 2003 discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in a Washington state herd, Bullard said.
However, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association and the American Meat Institute said Canadian beef was safe and that a protectionist stance by the U.S. government would ultimately harm trade with other countries.
"We're not only in support of USDA's [new import] rules. We don't believe they go far enough," said James Hodges, president of the AMI Foundation, Washington. "The BSE prevention measures in the U.S. and Canada are virtually identical. They include prohibiting imports of beef and beef products from high-risk countries dating back to 1989, the 1997 [ruminant-to-ruminant] feed ban, the removal of specified risk materials from the food supply, and BSE surveillance programs that are roughly equivalent. We have put in place extraordinary measures for the low level of risk that exists in our countries."
All three North American cases of BSE, including the Washington state case, have been linked to cattle that spent at least part of their lives in the Canadian province of Alberta. All are believed to have contracted the disease prior to 1997, when the United States and Canada both imposed a ban on the use of animal by-products in cattle feed, thought to be the primary conduit for spreading the otherwise non-communicable disease among cattle. The proposed rules will only allow the import of Canadian cattle 30 months old or younger, which will ensure that the cattle are free from the disease, the USDA said. Jan Lyons, president of the NCBA, stated, "International experts agree that [the] feed ban breaks the cycle of BSE and assures the disease will be eliminated."
R-Calf, however, seized on an investigation conducted by the Vancouver Sun last month, which claimed that Canadian cattle feed is often contaminated with animal parts. Citing tests by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the paper said that out of 70 samples of "vegetable only" feed tested last year, 59% had contained "undeclared animal materials," and questioned whether the 1997 feed regulations were being broken. Canadian officials countered by saying there may have been minor cross contamination with feed intended for hogs and chickens. Such feed is now excluded from the ban in the United States and Canada.
