May 24, 2004

Canada Beef Border Issue Gets Additional Complication

The U.S. government's admission that it quietly approved imports of some banned Canadian hamburger and other beef products last fall and winter has complicated Canada's bid to reopen the border.
 
Several U.S. members of Congress, including Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, Thursday accused the U.S. Department of Agriculture of exposing Americans to potential harm by keeping the shipments secret.
 
"I'm extremely concerned that American consumers have been unknowingly exposed to Canadian beef products," Daschle said in the article.
 
South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson, who along with Daschle, introduced a bill Thursday to make country-of-origin labeling of imported agricultural products mandatory by the end of September, and accused the USDA and the Bush administration of being "in the pocket" of the big meat packers.
 
"I'm outraged," Johnson also said in the article.
 
The USDA acknowledged this week that it allowed as much as 33 million pounds of Canadian processed beef - including hamburger patties and pepperoni - into the country between September 2003 and February of this year, the Globe and Mail said.
 
The USDA is also reportedly investigating whether it may have improperly sanctioned imports of Canadian-processed Australian and New Zealand beef during the same period, the article said.
 
The U.S. slapped a ban on those and other beef products from Canada a year ago Thursday after the discovery of a single case of mad cow disease at a farm in northern Alberta. Washington began relaxing the ban last summer and was permitting ground beef and bone-in beef cuts, until a court action by U.S. cattlemen in spring put that on hold. Now imports from Canada are restricted to muscle cuts under 30 months of age.
 
The controversy has heightened political tension surrounding the Bush administration's plan to draft new import rules aimed at reopening the border to most Canadian beef and cattle, the article said.
 
During a visit to the White House last month, Prime Minister Paul Martin hailed what he said was a firm commitment from Bush to lift the ban as soon as possible.
 
But Canadian expectations that the new rules could be in place as early as next month appear to be fading. The USDA is wading through more than 3,000 overwhelmingly negative comments, many calling for the border not to be reopened until all beef is labeled according to its country of origin, the article said.
 
Canada opposes the measure because it would disrupt the integrated nature of the North American cattle industry and potentially expose foreign products to consumer rejection.
 
Industry officials in the article said it would likely be well into the summer before the new rules are ready.
 
In April, the USDA announced it would allow all Canadian ground beef and bone-in beef, the latest phase of a gradual relaxation of the ban. But it reversed course two weeks later when the Montana-based Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund won a court injunction blocking the move.
 
R-CALF president Bill Bullard faulted the USDA for relaxing U.S. "health and safety standards" without notifying the public, the article said. The group has complained that the USDA had violated its own policies, under pressure from "Canada and large multinational meat packing corporations," some with plants on the Canadian side of the border.
 
But Gary Weber, executive director of the U.S. National Cattlemen's Beef Association, which represents the bulk of the cattle industry, in the article said the storm over the shipments is merely "an administrative permitting issue, not a food safety issue."
 
The USDA issued exemptions to some Canadian meat processing plants if they could show they had procedures in place to minimize the risk of shipping diseased beef, including the use of only beef from animals less than 30 months old.
 
Canadian officials in the article said they continue to take Bush at his word that the U.S. government is working to normalize cross border beef trade "as soon as possible."
 
Carla Ventin, a spokeswoman for Canadian Agriculture Minister Bob Speller, also in the article said all of the disputed Canadian beef entered the U.S. with the USDA's approval. And she said there is no reason to believe the U.S. timetable for issuing the new rules has slipped.
 
That sentiment was echoed in the article by Ted Haney, president of the Calgary-based Canada Beef Export Federation. He also disputed there was anything secret about the shipments, noting that key products were removed from the banned list on the recommendation of a Canada-U.S. working group and then publicly disclosed by the USDA.